How good (or bad) is Digital Planet/HP Shop actually?

T

TJ99

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Anybody buy anything from them yet? I see Hellopeter is full of complaints, and there are some bad threads about them on MyBB, but those are from way back in 2006 when dinosaurs roamed the earth, nothing more recent unfortunately.

Can I buy from them or should I rather not? Their prices seem really good on some things.. for what I want they're a third of the nearest competitor.
 
i have bought from them and received good service....but this was some time back
 
Thanks, but that's just the thing, I want to know how they are now, have they changed from 2006?
 
HP Proliant MicroServer N36L. The only other places to get them from are literally almost 3 times the price.
 
TJ99 said:
HP Proliant MicroServer N36L. The only other places to get them from are literally almost 3 times the price.
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drop me a PM with a link to the quote or listed price and i'll have a look if we can get it and maybe beat or match the price
 
RoganDawes said:
Nice looking piece of kit, for a low power home server.

Here's the link I found, but noted that it is out of stock.

http://www.digitalplanet.co.za/p-122548-hp-proliant-microserver-633724-421.aspx

Be curious to know if you can match/beat that price. If so, I'd consider one to replace my DNS323 :-)
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That's exactly why I want it, it's awesome value for that price. I don't know why anyone would buy those insanely priced NAS enclosures which hold one drive and cost more than this, which can run Windows Server 2008 R2 and has space for 4 drives, and 2 RAM slots.
 
Saw one went on BidOrBuy for R1100.00 recently, so it may be possible to actually find them at that price.

Good luck!
 
TJ99 said:
Yeah thanks, that's the people I was referring to in the OP, I want to know if they're any good.. but it seems their phone lines are down now... probably all of you trying to buy all their stock lol.
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The HPshop one doesn't show out of stock though - and the digital planet one was actually R100 cheaper a while back with 2GB of RAM,
 
I ordered one of the Microservers from HPShop on Friday. They said they were out of stock, but it was in stock at the supplier (Tarsus I am assuming), so would be 5-7 days. I dont know why it should take so long but will see how long it takes them to deliver, hopefully by the end of this week.
 
ramar said:
I ordered one of the Microservers from HPShop on Friday. They said they were out of stock, but it was in stock at the supplier (Tarsus I am assuming), so would be 5-7 days. I dont know why it should take so long but will see how long it takes them to deliver, hopefully by the end of this week.
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Thats also the description they give on the site:
HPShop said:
5-7 days
This item is ordered from the suppler. Delivery usually to your door usually takes 5-7 days.
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So I went ahead and ordered it from Hpshop since they apparently can get it, hopefully I'll have my little box of wholesome servery goodness in a week or so.

If not I'll be a very sad panda, since they money's already off my account....
 
TJ99 said:
Yeah thanks, that's the people I was referring to in the OP, I want to know if they're any good.. but it seems their phone lines are down now... probably all of you trying to buy all their stock lol.
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I ordered one on the 19th of April and it arrived on the 26th April, great piece of kit for the price.

HPShop's website said it would take 2days.. Tried to track my order online through CourierIT and it said it couldn't find the way-bill address, so needless to say I panicked. Phoned them on the Tuesday and they called CourierIT and sorted out the problem and had it on the Wednesday.
It was CourierIT who were at fault as the way-bill that arrived said they had had it since the 20th of April for 24-48hour delivery 6 days probably isn't exactly what your looking for, but the HPshop actually resolved it quickly once I contacted them and it wasn't actually there fault.

Have freenas on it at the moment, there's a thread in here somewhere that I will updated with my experience of the Microserver, hopefully this evening.
Hope this helps your decision, as for warranties and that not sure how good they are.

P.S-lol went to make some tea and you'd already posted! Well I got mine, if you don't get it in 2 days phone them. I gave them a few extra because of all the public holidays and weekend and that and the 5-7 days wasn't on there when I ordered :)
 
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@SomeoneEls:

Thanks for the post, it seems not many people in SA are actually using this machine so it's good to hear from someone who does have one. I tracked down your other thread, but I see it hasn't been updated yet.

I hear good things about FreeNAS but I was thinking of running Windows Server 2008 R2 or Home Server Vail (2011) on it, because I plan to use it mainly for media storage and backups of my documents etc from my desktop & 2 laptop PC's. I don't really know much about freeNAS and what you can and can't do with it.

I want to run my downloading apps (Steam, FDM, GOG downloader, etc) on it so I don't have to leave my desktop on 24/7, and those only work in Windows. Could you please also tell me how quiet it runs, since reviews say its quite silent, and it shouldn't use much power either since it only has a 150W PSU...
 
TJ99 said:
@SomeoneEls:

Thanks for the post, it seems not many people in SA are actually using this machine so it's good to hear from someone who does have one. I tracked down your other thread, but I see it hasn't been updated yet.

I hear good things about FreeNAS but I was thinking of running Windows Server 2008 R2 or Home Server Vail (2011) on it, because I plan to use it mainly for media storage and backups of my documents etc from my desktop & 2 laptop PC's. I don't really know much about freeNAS and what you can and can't do with it.

I want to run my downloading apps (Steam, FDM, GOG downloader, etc) on it so I don't have to leave my desktop on 24/7, and those only work in Windows. Could you please also tell me how quiet it runs, since reviews say its quite silent, and it shouldn't use much power either since it only has a 150W PSU...
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Yeah haven't gotten around to it yet, but am planning on trying a few different OS's on it before I hide it in the cupboard. I also haven't tested the power usage myself but these post should give you an idea. These are the one's I bookmarked when I was doing research 1 2 3 4pretty impressive really, will change obviously depending on what drives you have and what OS you're running

It's pretty quite the HDD's are probably the loudest part.

Also going to use mine as a media/backup server and downloading but I think Freenas may work for me, I can add a download manager to it and a torrent app( or nzb downloader if I want to and its pretty easy to setup if you're just going to use it as a nas appliance (performance might not be 100% out the box but it should work fine, for max performance a bit of tuning would be necessary).

Otherwise I might just use a standard ubuntu server install or ClearOS or something that I don't have to pay extra moola for a license ;)

P.S.- if anyone plans on using FreeNas the .8 version has just come out (2nd May) but adding apps to it has been changed significantly and they haven't released any yet. So if you plan on doing that either wait a little bit, use it as just a nas for now or use .7 (although upgrades to .8 aren't supported)
 
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