Business thinking - PC replacements
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@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.
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@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?
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Why do people keep coming back to servers in a thread clearly titled about PCs?
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@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.
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@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.
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@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.
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@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.
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@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.
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@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.
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@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.)
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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.
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@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.
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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.
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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.
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@tirendir said in Business thinking - PC replacements:
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.
This is covered by #2
- new equipment is more efficient and will make workers more efficient
Efficiency is all about cost and value. For example, we had an employee complaining that her computer was slow. She had a process that took 3 hours to complete on her old machine. With a temp new machine that process was reduced to 20 mins. She was granted a new machine ASAP and ROI was well under a year considering only that one process.
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@dashrender Fair enough, I apparently glossed over that point too quickly. Although I would say there's no scenario in which a 5 year old computer, laptop or desktop, would ever not be past-due for replacement if you are including the content of my previous post as being covered under your second point.
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@tirendir said in Business thinking - PC replacements:
@dashrender Fair enough, I apparently glossed over that point too quickly. Although I would say there's no scenario in which a 5 year old computer, laptop or desktop, would ever not be past-due for replacement if you are including the content of my previous post as being covered under your second point.
I have a 4 year old laptop at home. I have a brand new laptop here in my office. They perform the EHR based tasks in exactly the same amount of time. There is no reason to replace my home laptop for this process. The laptop in this case isn't the issue, it's the online system we use. Considering we use that for 95%+ of our daily work, the computers barely matter anymore.
Now that said, my 2007/2008 computers replaced in 2014, OK yeah, we saw a time reduction in tasks, but sadly, other non computer processes prevent us from taking advantage of the new found time savings, so again, replacing computers for that one reason alone wouldn't have been worth while.
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@tirendir said in Business thinking - PC replacements:
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).
That is nowhere close to the cost of a desktop PC. In fact it is pretty much half.
I buy a desktop at least monthly for one client or another. The price tag is never less than $800.
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@jaredbusch said in Business thinking - PC replacements:
@tirendir said in Business thinking - PC replacements:
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).
That is nowhere close to the cost of a desktop PC. In fact is it pretty much half.
I buy a desktop at least monthly for one client or another. The price tag is never less than $800.
Agreed. I typically spend around $800. In case anyone cares, I'm buying HP EliteDesks. And this price does not include a monitor.
I can probably get something for less, but these units have done very well for me. I have over a dozen that have been in service for 4+ years with only one HDD failing (and they are mostly in small overheating places).
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If your users utilize Microsoft office alongside your EHR for instance, I'm fairly certain they would see a pretty sizable impact to attempting to use both simultaneously on a 5+ year old device. I'm guessing the EHR is essentially web-based access? If there's minimal multi-tasking, it's probably less of an issue for you than many. Although if there is a significant level of multi-tasking going on, I would suspect there's probably been a lot more machine-based delay occurring that users may not be complaining about because they just think it's normal perhaps?
I just paid $700 for new EliteDesks, and those were 7th-gen i5 with 8GB of RAM and SSDs with 3-year business warranties. >.> I guess I'm doing something right?
