Greetings all! Long time lurker, first time poster, please bear with me as I share my most recent tale of tech support woe.

Small bit of background - I'm female IT that tends to still be "one of the guys". I've been working as tech support for our library system for a shade over 6 years now and I love the job, and it's "mostly" stress-free. We have over 600 computers, laptops, and mobile devices that we take care of and not many of the desktop computers are the same model (predominately Lenovo by about 95%, but the models vary between branches and departments), which causes problems when we need to update our image between branches. This is further compounded by the fact that we use an Image MASSter Solo-4 that can only duplicate 3 hard drives from 1 master at a time rather than an entire lab in one sitting. I keep telling myself I'm going to streamline the process better some day but then I turn around and say "Nah, I can do that tomorrow..." and then proceed to queue up something to watch at my computer instead and find another, more critical project that needs my attention, and the next thing I know, another year has gone by. The closest I've come to simplifying the process is using a sysprep image (thanks to my husband) between the different models of computers and that has made a world of difference.

Anyways, onto our current issue of late. Around the end of last year, my boss decided to buy a few models of m93p (10AB-0011US) computers for us to test out and see how they would handle. They apparently have a very high Windows Experience Index, the best you can get on the mass market right now without building your own, and the computers are TINY, like, nettop tiny! So they're cool to look at, but would easily be stolen if someone wanted to walk off with it. But they have a SSD, 8GB of memory, Core i7's, 3 year manufacturer warranties, they're nice computers, or so you'd think from the specs. Oh, and they cost $1,100 a piece...

And after testing for a month, he decides to replace all the public computers at our main branch with them, which means we have to lock down every, single PC, because... People. We use to have to use cable ties to keep the previous computers closed (the sides would never stay on) because people kept stealing the memory from the computers. Also a fun time. But these new computers start having fan issues, as in, they get REALLY LOUD, like, jet engine loud. And the fan doesn't stop. So Lenovo would send a tech out, with a fan... The wrong size, because apparently there's a tower model that uses the same model number. Way to go, Lenovo. And the tech has to come back the next day. And apparently the problem is the system board. Really?! The system board, for crying out loud? And this isn't happening to just one or two computers..

This has happened to about 20 computers now, within the space of a couple of months. And at the moment, we're sitting on 8 computers, slated for new system boards but, apparently, Lenovo is out of them at this time, with an ETA of June 9th before these babies can get fixed. And we have more PC's still going down every few days with loud fans. But it's okay, really, because we expect these teeny, tiny PC's to handle being used and abused by patrons day, in and day out for a few years... There is just so much that can go wrong in these things and we have no way of repairing them ourselves - we can't even put in a video card if onboard video goes bad. All because this model has the highest Windows Experience Index!

I honestly can't see these holding up to hard use...they just make me want to cry now from the frustration that I know I will have down the road with them.