IT Professionals Question

[Thordic]

Here's a question for any IT people at fairly large companies.

How often does your company upgrade computer hardware? Our department is trying to get an upgrade and the IT lady doesn't like us so she is trying to stall.

She is claiming our PCs are still "new" (they aren't), but Im curious to see how other companies would define "new" and how often they upgrade their hardware.

As far as our usage goes, we do a lot of our work in MS Word and Excel, but it isn't just word processing. The files can often be between 10 and 50MB or more with embedded images and are heavily formatted (By all rights they should probably be done in InDesign, but thats a whole other IT issue). We also do some work with Photoshop and CorelDRAW, etc. So old crappy computers aren't cutting it. There are a lot of times when I try to open a large file and the computer will stall out and Word will crash, etc.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Hexis]

My workplace has a standard life cycle for hardware of three years. Nothing that deals with data is supposed to be used after three years. Small upgrades happen more often, and the gear is usually distributed depending on the users's need.

My advice would be to aks for small upgrades. More ram for example.

[Thordic]

My current PC is an HP Kayak XM600 Series 1. They stopped selling these in October of 2000, its a bit behind the times

Its a P3 600 with 128MB of ram. I'd like to have my way with it like they did to the fax machine in Office Space.

[Muzikman]

The speed of the machine has nothing to do with it. If it has not appriciated (sp?) yet then they will take a tax hit for buying new ones.

Where I use to work they went from a 5 year turn around to a 3 year turn around.

If they buy today a P4 2.4Ghz machine, just because there are 4ghz machines out there doesn't mean that in a year they can turn around and buy a new machine. This is one of the reasons they did switch to a 3 year (there was also tax reasons). They would not buy top of the line machines. They would usually buy the lowest level from which ever company they had an agreement with (they had a Dell agreement). Because of this, they were buying 1.8ghz machines when 2.4 was the norm. This means they are already 6months to a year behind.

[Thordic]

Muz - All new employees get a P4 3Ghz machine. Thats the company standard for new equipment. Some new employees will get recycled machines from other employees that left, but the standard for new PCs is fairly high-end.

Also, we have a large office (around 200 employees) and with all the comings and goings I'm sure they could find something better. In fact we just had two people leave who I would wager had better computers than us.

I'm just trying to find some firepower as for IT standards to use. This has nothing to do with the company really, this lady just doesn't like us and is trying to keep us from getting new PCs.

[Eric Cartman]

Our company has started leasing all of our PC's. We seem to flip 'em about every three years so far. we've got Compaq P4's @ 2GB at the moment. We run Windows 2000 professional and Office 97 (ghetto), but we're upgrading to XP for Windows and Office shortly.

[Crighton]

2 year life cycle on priority departments, 5 years on non priority departments. 2 years on servers.

Minor upgrades, more ram, dual head video cards, ect ect. are given out on request only as long as we have budget for them left.

[Gunga]

This has nothing to do with the company really, this lady just doesn't like us and is trying to keep us from getting new PCs.

Why doesn't she like you guys? Did you go and get wasted at her wedding or something?

[Miscue]

Here's a question for any IT people at fairly large companies.

How often does your company upgrade computer hardware? Our department is trying to get an upgrade and the IT lady doesn't like us so she is trying to stall.

She is claiming our PCs are still "new" (they aren't), but Im curious to see how other companies would define "new" and how often they upgrade their hardware.

As far as our usage goes, we do a lot of our work in MS Word and Excel, but it isn't just word processing. The files can often be between 10 and 50MB or more with embedded images and are heavily formatted (By all rights they should probably be done in InDesign, but thats a whole other IT issue). We also do some work with Photoshop and CorelDRAW, etc. So old crappy computers aren't cutting it. There are a lot of times when I try to open a large file and the computer will stall out and Word will crash, etc.

Any help would be appreciated.

When the warranty is up (extended warranty is purchased) - 4 years. Users with special needs can get a better computer... instead of standard issue - it's a matter of their department purchasing it.

[Miscue]

My current PC is an HP Kayak XM600 Series 1. They stopped selling these in October of 2000, its a bit behind the times

Its a P3 600 with 128MB of ram. I'd like to have my way with it like they did to the fax machine in Office Space.

Dang... that computer should have been replaced... twice by now!

Oh about dealing with her... remember, that EVERYONE is a computer expert.

[Hexis]

That machine has less ram than my video card. Find some critical app with a requirement of more ram. These days that shouldn't bo too hard.

[Thordic]

She's been argueing its not "cost effective", and she had the gall to say our computers are still "new".

I came back by asking how cost effective it is to spend money upgrading a computer that is already obsolete. I asked how much more use they expect out of a computer that is already five years old. Do they expect me to use it for another year? Two? Not to mention any ram upgrades for this computer would be old PC100 and would be of no use in a P4 system when I finally did upgrade.

The funny part is our graphics guy is in dire need of an upgrade. He has a dual PIII 750 with 1gig of ram and a P4 1.6 with 512MB of ram. Neither one on its own is powerful enough for his needs, but either one would probably do fine for our needs for now, or at least be a huge improvement over what we are using now. So they could buy ONE new computer for him and give his old computers to the other two of us in need of new PCs. But they won't do that.

And I forgot to mention we recently received brand new $700 HP flatpanel displays that we didn't even ask for. But they can't get us new PCs, which we desperately need. Ridiculous.

[Miscue]

Flip the power switch to 220v, and demonstrate to her that it is broken.

[MantisMag]

last summer i worked as an intern on an upgrade at a major insurance company. they were moving from NT 4 to XP Pro. anyone with a 1Ghz machine or better did not get a new computer. we upgraded those in place. everyone else got a new 2.8Ghz computer with 512MB of ram. anyone with special memory needs had to go through their own department's procurement officer. most of the computers we upgraded were 500-800Mhz.

[bornl33t]

You did ask this question on the thorums? Since the members there are sooo cool and all?