Desktop refresh best practice

scottalanmiller

@scottalanmiller said:

Only big thing is, that's a 7200 RPM desktop drive. That's horrible.

Pretty much all HP desktops come with 7200 SATA drives, I think? Even their workstations, which I find pretty annoying.

Yes, it often stops us from buying new because there is no value to it.

@scottalanmiller said:

@Carnival-Boy said:

I'm a sucker for anything small.

Me too, I love ultra small form factor machines.

I hate them. Rather have a full size tower any day.

@Carnival-Boy said:

@scottalanmiller said:

Only big thing is, that's a 7200 RPM desktop drive. That's horrible.

Pretty much all HP desktops come with 7200 SATA drives, I think? Even their workstations, which I find pretty annoying.

SSDs where a CTO option even back when I bought my HP z800. Which is a machine from 2011 that will run circles around most even modern computers. I had a 256gb sdd put in mine. (plus 6x 1TB enterprise drives)

Carnival Boy

CTO?

@Carnival-Boy said:

CTO?

Configure to order.

Dashrender

and CTO's always cost a mint also!

scottalanmiller

Yeah, you lose all the cost advantage of the cheap, small machines when going that route, sadly.

Dashrender

Definitely better off buying the new machine and replacing the drive yourself (heck probably better off adding more RAM yourself too).

scottalanmiller

@Dashrender said:

Definitely better off buying the new machine and replacing the drive yourself (heck probably better off adding more RAM yourself too).

And doing that is what led us to buy used instead of new in many cases. Once we have to open the cases and modify them, might as well start off cheap We get even cheaper by getting machines with no hard drives at all that most people don't want to touch.

Carnival Boy

So normally when flattening and doing a fresh OS re-install on and old PC I will purchase a single Windows volume licence and use that multiple times because a single volume licence gives you rights to install on multiple PCs if those PCs have an OEM licence, right?

But what is the situation with the free Windows 10 deal? Will the same work? Or will I have to install Windows 8.1 and then do an upgrade via WSUS? Which will probably be fine, but is a bit time-consuming, I suspect.

scottalanmiller

@Carnival-Boy said:

So normally when flattening and doing a fresh OS re-install on and old PC I will purchase a single Windows volume licence and use that multiple times because a single volume licence gives you rights to install on multiple PCs if those PCs have an OEM licence, right?

It gives you imaging rights. So you have the right to use the VL license and a single image on all machines where you would have had the rights to put that OS manually.

Dashrender

I'm curious though.. at what point do you have a Windows 10 license?

Just because you have a Windows 7/8/8.1 license doesn't automatically make it a Windows 10 license, otherwise there would be no point in having the 1 year BS confusion they have.

So you have a bunch of corporately controlled Windows 7/8/8.1 machines - how do you upgrade the license? Do we have to install Windows Pro, then register with our MS ID, then we'll get the upgrade tied to both the computer and presumably our MS ID, then we can wipe that and deploy Windows 10 using the VL media? What a pain! That's doable for probably up to 20 machines, but much past that and you'll living in a nightmare!

scottalanmiller

Good question, @Dashrender I have no idea either. I wonder too.

Dashrender

I think the entire SMB world is waiting for this answer.

Sadly I think the Windows 10 upgrade is going to be exactly like Office Product Key Cards. When you purchased this key card you associated it with your MS account. Then if you needed to reinstall it, you would have to pick a key from those available in your account. This did not work for tiny offices - I had a client who decided to go the cheep route, I was able to associate all 10 of their PKCs with a single MS account, but when looking at the keys through their portal, there was no way to know which was installed on which machine.

I hope that the machine itself somehow generates a unique ID that MS logs that has nothing to do with an MS ID so this machine can pass from user to user without issues.

@scottalanmiller said:

Yeah, you lose all the cost advantage of the cheap, small machines when going that route, sadly.

Depends if your order size is less than 50-100 then yes. But when you are ordering 100-300 computers at a time all they will get the CTO costs next to nothing for you, many times much cheaper than the original config cost would be. There's something to be said for have just a few different model computers (Based on the phase of the refresh cycle) and having next day replacement warranties.

@Dashrender said:

I'm curious though.. at what point do you have a Windows 10 license?

Just because you have a Windows 7/8/8.1 license doesn't automatically make it a Windows 10 license, otherwise there would be no point in having the 1 year BS confusion they have.

When you reserve the copy and then they send you the serial/download you own the license otherwise you do not.

@Dashrender said:

I think the entire SMB world is waiting for this answer.

Sadly I think the Windows 10 upgrade is going to be exactly like Office Product Key Cards. When you purchased this key card you associated it with your MS account. Then if you needed to reinstall it, you would have to pick a key from those available in your account. This did not work for tiny offices - I had a client who decided to go the cheep route, I was able to associate all 10 of their PKCs with a single MS account, but when looking at the keys through their portal, there was no way to know which was installed on which machine.

I hope that the machine itself somehow generates a unique ID that MS logs that has nothing to do with an MS ID so this machine can pass from user to user without issues.

Why does it matter, Just keep the keys in a License database, you never need them after that besides record keeping. Use a Windows 10 Vlk and volume media. No real additional housekeeping needed.

Dashrender

@thecreativeone91 , you're probably right. But I always go back to the I'm getting rid of the computer and I might be donating it, or selling it to staff, so they will need Windows reinstalled with the legal license for home use.

Dashrender

@thecreativeone91 said:

@Dashrender said:

I'm curious though.. at what point do you have a Windows 10 license?

Just because you have a Windows 7/8/8.1 license doesn't automatically make it a Windows 10 license, otherwise there would be no point in having the 1 year BS confusion they have.

When you reserve the copy and then they send you the serial/download you own the license otherwise you do not.

If this is the case, and you have 100 PC's that are all on a domain and as such you don't get the invite for Windows 10 because it's disabled by MS for domain joined machines, how do you move forward?

@Dashrender said:

@thecreativeone91 said:

@Dashrender said:

I'm curious though.. at what point do you have a Windows 10 license?

Just because you have a Windows 7/8/8.1 license doesn't automatically make it a Windows 10 license, otherwise there would be no point in having the 1 year BS confusion they have.

When you reserve the copy and then they send you the serial/download you own the license otherwise you do not.

If this is the case, and you have 100 PC's that are all on a domain and as such you don't get the invite for Windows 10 because it's disabled by MS for domain joined machines, how do you move forward?

Where did you get that it's disabled by MS for domain joined? You can still do it on domain joined. The App is under C:\Windows\System32\GWX as GWX.exe if the update was installed.