Refreshing the Desktop

Computerworld - Maybe it's the sound of all those tapping feet while users wait for their spreadsheets to open. Maybe management finally woke up to the cost of replacing those hard drives one by one at remote offices.
Whatever the reason, many companies are upgrading to a common "sweet spot" of 2.3- to 2.6-MHz Pentium 4 desktops and 1.6- to 1.7-MHz Pentium M notebooks, usually with 512MB of RAM and a 40GB to 60GB hard drive. That much is easy. The tougher questions are when to upgrade PCs rather than replace them and how to use this round of purchases to drive down long-term support costs while boosting business benefits. Here are some tips from those who have already struggled to find answers.
Simplify, Simplify, Simplify
"We had the 'Noah's ark syndrome'—we had two of everything," says Tim Link, CIO at Ohio State University Newark and Central Ohio Technical College. Over the past three years, he has replaced that unwieldy mix of 1,300 client PCs with one of three standard configurations from Dell Inc. PC support calls have already dropped 22%, and Link expects them to be down by 30% when final results are in.
Link has carefully planned how to minimize the number of configurations he must support as he replaces one-third of his systems each year. He's reluctant to go to a four-year life cycle for PCs because although that would reduce PC purchase costs, it would mean more individual models, which would complicate support issues.
Trying to open files from different versions of applications running on various versions of Windows is a huge headache for users and IT managers, and can be a prime driver for an upgrade. At the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services in Raleigh, "it got to the point where a person sent an Excel spreadsheet to somebody else, and they couldn't open it" because they were running a different version of Excel, says CIO Don Allen. "That's when we decided we had to do something."
By July 1, the department hopes to have replaced 5,000 of its approximately 18,000 PCs with new systems from Hewlett-Packard Co. based on a single system "image" of the same processor, operating system and office productivity applications.
Keep It Longer
"I've been in the industry more than a decade, and today's stuff is able to run a lot longer [than earlier PCs]," says Roger Wilding, a senior technical engineer at CNF Inc., a global transportation and logistics company in Palo Alto, Calif. He's replacing some of his older 12,000 desktops and notebooks with new Dell systems and plans to keep them four to five years, "waterfalling" the most capable PCs to less-demanding users as they are replaced.
Given typical failure rates, most organizations can safely plan to keep a desktop PC four years, says Mark Margevicius, an analyst at Gartner Inc. in Stamford, Conn. If the system fails after the standard three-year warranty period, he suggests replacing it rather than spending time to fix it.
For notebooks, which face rougher handling by users, Margevicius suggests sticking to the traditional three-year replacement cycle.
The four-year cycle worked fine for John Montgomery, vice president and chief technology officer of Embarcadero Systems Corp., a provider of shipping terminal management services and cargo management systems in Alameda, Calif. By upgrading the memory from 128MB to 256MB, he has managed to upgrade many older systems so they can run Windows 2000.
Some users buy higher-end systems to stretch the machines' life span or reduce the need for future upgrades. For example, Link buys PCs with a 3-GHz processor and a full gigabyte of memory. "I don't want to have to buy a memory upgrade, I don't want to buy a hard-drive upgrade. I'm looking to get these as hands-off as possible," he says.
While PC replacement cycles are stretching out, Margevicius suggests that adding memory is about the only work worth doing on an older machine. Dallas-based Wyndham International Inc. is replacing about 2,000 PCs and boosting the memory in another 1,000 from 128MB to 256MB or 512MB. But only systems with at least a 500-MHz Pentium III get upgraded rather than replaced, according to Mark Hedley, senior vice president and chief technology officer.
"If it's something as simple as replacing a mouse or a keyboard," it pays to fix the problem without worrying what's inside the box, says Steve Acterman, director of corporate IT management at the Orange, Calif., office of Volt Information Sciences Inc., a professional services firm. But Acterman plans to replace Volt systems older than Pentium IIIs with 1,200 to 1,500 PCs from HP by June.
Don't Forget Service and Support
"Don't get hung up on the name brand," says Wilding. "If you look inside the guts of a PC, they're becoming more and more a commodity item like a toaster." Instead, he says, focus on which contractors the vendor uses to support remote offices and the quality of the vendor's service.
For example, some vendors will automatically replace PCs and even automatically update software for a fixed price per seat. But Margevicius warns these services work best for companies with strict controls over what PCs users can buy. If not, he says, "you'll get nickel and dimed" with extra charges to support any nonstandard configurations.
Allen is relying on Affiliated Computer Services Inc. in Dallas to perform regular hardware and software updates across offices in all 100 North Carolina counties. IT managers should be sure a vendor has the processes and qualified subcontractors to handle such work over a wide area, he says.
Remember Education and Training
With the move toward fewer, more standard configurations, users need to learn that "they don't have some of the freedoms they had before," says Allen. Rather than buy new systems whenever they find the money or download software from the Internet, he says, users must accept getting hardware and software upgrades on a departmentwide schedule.
Users also "have to allow us time to come in and replace their systems," says Allen. "They can't tell us 'We're too busy today; come back in two weeks.' " And rather than asking a neighbor for help, he says, they must call the help desk, which can then generate a trouble ticket "so we can track how long it takes to get problems resolved."
Wilding also suggests that corporate IT discuss and agree on procedures with remote offices specifying when a PC should be replaced rather than upgraded. "Set your policies up ahead of time," he advises, "so you're not fighting [over replacements] bit by bit."

TYPICAL CONFIGURATIONS

DESKTOPS PRICE 2.3- to 3-MHz Pentium 4 processor $800-$1,500 512MB RAM 40GB-60GB hard drive NOTEBOOKS PRICE 1.6- to 1.7-MHz Pentium M processor $1,500-$2,000 512MB RAM 40MB hard drive Note: Configuration ranges for average knowledge workers; pricing reflects corporate discounts. 1 2 3 Next » Recommend Digg Twitter ShareThis Email Print Send Feedback Reprints Jump to comments Desktops Additional Resources Xerox Win a color printer! By using solid ink technology only from Xerox, you could save up to 65% by printing color for the cost of black and white. Enter for a chance to WIN a PhaserTM 8860 network color printer! Microsoft Upgrade to Internet Explorer 8 today. Save time and mitigate security risk. Deploy it now. Sybase NEXT-GENERATION MOBILITY PLATFORMS In this white paper, IDC analyzes the role of next-generation mobile enterprise platforms as organizations seek a more strategic deployment of mobile solutions. 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