Business thinking - PC replacements
-
@darek-hamann said in Business thinking - PC replacements:
Some additional reasons to upgrade hardware include:
- current warranty for parts and service
- availablitity of parts, for parts replacement. as servers get older and older, it may be difficult to find parts, and those you do find may cost more.
- it's all about cost, and time which == cost.
We're talking about PCs/laptops, in servers these things make total sense, but desktops frequently outlast their warranty time frame. Also considering the cost of longer warranty versus low failure rate which could require a machine replacement - the occasional replacement has been fair less expensive than the cost of adding the warranties?
i.e. We purchased 30 laptops in 2007, we still had 27 of them in service in 2014. Adding a 3 year warranty would have cost significantly more than the 3 replacement units.
-
@Dashrender the best thing to do is just budget in the costs yearly even if you don't do it. so in 5-7 years you know you cna just do a mass swap and be done with it.
-
@jaredbusch said in Business thinking - PC replacements:
@Dashrender the best thing to do is just budget in the costs yearly even if you don't do it. so in 5-7 years you know you cna just do a mass swap and be done with it.
This is actually my proposed plan in my OP.
-
Basically... work out roughly a replacement frequency that is sensible throughout the farm. If that is ever four, five or eight years average, whatever. Now put away every year towards that, consider that money "spent" whether it is or not. Have it at the ready and buy new machines when the right time comes. There is really no better way to handle it.
You can't tell ahead of time what a good replacement time is going to be, nearly all of the deciding factors would be complete guesses today. OS compatibility, security features, changes in needs, hardware failure rates, changes in office staff, changes in work environment and so forth. You can't predict that stuff two years out, let alone eight. Nor can you tell when desktops will go on sale, go up in price, suddenly get cheaper, etc. You just have to be ready.
-
Thanks - I'll be sending this along shortly.
-
@scottalanmiller said in Business thinking - PC replacements:
Now put away every year towards that, consider that money "spent" whether it is or not. Have it at the ready and buy new machines when the right time comes. There is really no better way to handle it.
That doesn't work for many businesses because you get taxed on money you carry over. So essentially for a business to use that model, they would have to do something else with the money all the other years, and then get hit with a huge bill in one year. Add insult to injury if you have an apps that have to be updated because your OS was updated.
-
@mike-davis said in Business thinking - PC replacements:
@scottalanmiller said in Business thinking - PC replacements:
Now put away every year towards that, consider that money "spent" whether it is or not. Have it at the ready and buy new machines when the right time comes. There is really no better way to handle it.
That doesn't work for many businesses because you get taxed on money you carry over. So essentially for a business to use that model, they would have to do something else with the money all the other years, and then get hit with a huge bill in one year. Add insult to injury if you have an apps that have to be updated because your OS was updated.
There are systems for making that go away, though, like leasing.
-
@scottalanmiller What advantages would a company gain by leasing servers? Are there some hard and fast rules to consider it or not or would that be more of an accounting question?
-
Why do people keep coming back to servers in a thread clearly titled about PCs?
-
@mike-davis said in Business thinking - PC replacements:
@scottalanmiller said in Business thinking - PC replacements:
Now put away every year towards that, consider that money "spent" whether it is or not. Have it at the ready and buy new machines when the right time comes. There is really no better way to handle it.
That doesn't work for many businesses because you get taxed on money you carry over. So essentially for a business to use that model, they would have to do something else with the money all the other years, and then get hit with a huge bill in one year. Add insult to injury if you have an apps that have to be updated because your OS was updated.
This can be a soft setup, sure the virtual accrual can be there, so the bosses know the money is earmarked, but if it's not really used, use it for something else so it's not taxed or it gets taxed and moved out. but don't just buy PCs to buy PCs - that's a waste of money.
-
@dashrender My apologies. My question was regarding leasing, as it was brought up by SAM. Sorry if it was so far off the topic of desktops.
-
@dashrender said in Business thinking - PC replacements:
@mike-davis said in Business thinking - PC replacements:
@scottalanmiller said in Business thinking - PC replacements:
Now put away every year towards that, consider that money "spent" whether it is or not. Have it at the ready and buy new machines when the right time comes. There is really no better way to handle it.
That doesn't work for many businesses because you get taxed on money you carry over. So essentially for a business to use that model, they would have to do something else with the money all the other years, and then get hit with a huge bill in one year. Add insult to injury if you have an apps that have to be updated because your OS was updated.
This can be a soft setup, sure the virtual accrual can be there, so the bosses know the money is earmarked, but if it's not really used, use it for something else so it's not taxed or it gets taxed and moved out. but don't just buy PCs to buy PCs - that's a waste of money.
That, too, yes. Show the savings from years past so that they understand that it needs to be spent this year.
-
@wrx7m said in Business thinking - PC replacements:
@scottalanmiller What advantages would a company gain by leasing servers? Are there some hard and fast rules to consider it or not or would that be more of an accounting question?
It's nearly all about accounting. But it can also mean support options, too. Leasing often ties to support.
-
@scottalanmiller said in Business thinking - PC replacements:
@wrx7m said in Business thinking - PC replacements:
@scottalanmiller What advantages would a company gain by leasing servers? Are there some hard and fast rules to consider it or not or would that be more of an accounting question?
It's nearly all about accounting. But it can also mean support options, too. Leasing often ties to support.
Sure, I'm not sure about other non server things, but I don't recall seeing leasing go past 5 years with servers (I'm sure there are edge cases that do). So you lease your equipment for 5 years and have a 5 year warranty on it. You replace the equipment with the lease is nearly up, and start over.
-
@dashrender said in Business thinking - PC replacements:
@scottalanmiller said in Business thinking - PC replacements:
@wrx7m said in Business thinking - PC replacements:
@scottalanmiller What advantages would a company gain by leasing servers? Are there some hard and fast rules to consider it or not or would that be more of an accounting question?
It's nearly all about accounting. But it can also mean support options, too. Leasing often ties to support.
Sure, I'm not sure about other non server things, but I don't recall seeing leasing go past 5 years with servers (I'm sure there are edge cases that do). So you lease your equipment for 5 years and have a 5 year warranty on it. You replace the equipment with the lease is nearly up, and start over.
Pretty sure you can get any lease terms that you want, maybe not from OEMs.
-
@scottalanmiller said in Business thinking - PC replacements:
Pretty sure you can get any lease terms that you want, maybe not from OEMs.
yes, it's called a loan. (Which is what a lease really is.)
-
All accounting issues aside, in the end I think the mass upgrade is more disruptive to business on all sides than the trickle replacement.
For those of you that have done mass upgrades, consider the process.
You select a particular model and config based on that days standards.
You have them all shipped and have a pile of PCs sitting somewhere.
They have to all be unboxed. How many fit on your bench.
You spend time (weeks?) working up your image.
You start to push your image as quick as your hardware will allow.
You start swapping out user machines as quickly as you can.
User questions start rolling in - you're still trying to move computers off your bench.
You realize you have to tweak your image.
You redo the image and reimage the machines that were already done.Trickle replacement
A few machines show up each month.
You unbox them in your office and put them all on your workbench.
You deploy your image and keep working on other tasks.
You deploy them to a few users and troubleshoot any issues.
Make a note of issues and tweak image for the next round.
Order up the next round and repeat next month.As new OSs or software comes out, you can try it on your next cycle without disrupting the entire company. You don't have to update everything all at once so that users are getting a new OS and new software. In the mass upgrades, how long do the machines sit on the bench depreciating before they are put in front of a user? As employees are added ordering another computer for a new user can be done quickly. If you are in the 3 year of a mass upgrade, you have to price shop and all that since your original model likely won't be available.
-
@mike-davis said in Business thinking - PC replacements:
machines sit on the bench depreciating before they are put in front of a user? As employees are added ordering another
One tweak I would make to your listing there - if you are doing a massive rollout, get your hands on a half dozen or so units up front. Built the image and deploy it. My average image takes at most two days to tweak. Deploy those 6 units out - find issues, update redeploy - imaged locked. In the mean time your order has arrived and now you can start with the replacement machines.
-
Sure it's a lot of work to deploy a large number of machines at once, but when most of your workers do the same tasks, need the same machine, supporting multiple devices with different drivers, etc is a PITA. Of course images today don't have near the issues they did 10-15 years ago with multiple drivers being included, but still, one less thing to worry about.
Plus it cuts down on end user whining that so-n-so's computer is newer than theirs, etc. SMBs suffer this problem a lot more than enterprise customers seems to.
-
I might suggest that one reason I've not seen mentioned at all, is replacing computers when they begin costing time waiting on the device to do it's job.
If your users have to wait say.. one minute an hour, for 8 hours a day, every day of a work year just because the computers are getting old; even if everyone is making $12/hr, you are going to spend $416/yr per-employee to pay employees to do nothing but sit and wait at their PC accomplishing nothing (with which, you could almost buy a brand new PC anyway and save all that wasted labor money). None of this accounts for potential savings at the wall outlets for upgrading to immensely electrically superior computers either, because half a decade sees a pretty substantial improvement to the cost of electricity to power dozens of computers.
It's part of why I'm not a big fan of internet-based solutions unless the overall speed of the connection and the systems on both ends can reduce the performance penalty sufficiently. It doesn't matter if I can access a system anywhere if the availability slows everyone's access down to the point where it's actually not a net-improvement on efficiency or productivity (although just net-neutral is fine) over running the solution locally for instance. Ideally, I would want the solution available directly/locally for improved speed, and remotely available for access so I get the best of all worlds, but I'm not a fan of slowing down labor to save money. Time = money, so any/all business calculations that don't account for it (of which there should be none imo) are quite simply going to yield errant results. Also, it's worth pointing out that labor is almost without exception the single largest controllable expense in virtually any organization, so maximizing the value of labor is almost always going to yield the most benefits.
