For general office user, an SSD works wonders and makes a bigger difference to user perceptions of performance than say a dual to quad core upgrade. Work are throwing SSDs into some into older Ivy Bridge i5s to improve performance, instead of replacing the PCs as they've hit 4 years old...
IT Support...
- Thread starter Freakbro
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lets not forget if he reinstalls to win 7 64, there will be a trillion updates need downloading
trouble is user has 4Gb win7 32 and it isn't adequate,
although boot times will improve the SSD will only mask the disk thrashing
admittedly the SSD wont take long to image if he knows what he's doing
trouble is user has 4Gb win7 32 and it isn't adequate,
although boot times will improve the SSD will only mask the disk thrashing
admittedly the SSD wont take long to image if he knows what he's doing
Soldato
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You're not going to gain much from moving them back to 64bit if they only have 4gb of ram. You'll gain what, 500mb? You would need to upgrade the ram as well to Make it worthwhile and if the only thing installed on most of them is office then I don't really see the point?
There's no point in even thinking about upgrading those PCs even if you're throwing more RAM at them because those CPUs are utter rubbish. Most business applications, and even a few browser tabs in Chrome will destroy them nowadays. Most issues that are being experienced now will be down to the CPU and just how inadequate it is in those PCs. More RAM (requiring 64-bit for sure) and adding SSDs won't make much difference at all here...
So an upgrade would look like this:
£120 for OS
£30 (at least) for RAM
2 hours minimum installation time (not including updates, but if they're all the same, one PC can be built and then imaged and then this can then be put onto all the other PCs as well)
So for 8 PCs you're probably looking at at least 20 hours labour for all of that. Nevermind that you're just unnecessarily upgrading pretty poor PCs already. £40 per hour is about £800 labour. So £2k just to upgrade old PCs, and the result will be that they're still going to be pretty rubbish because those CPUs will let you down so much. It isn't worth it at all...
So an upgrade would look like this:
£120 for OS
£30 (at least) for RAM
2 hours minimum installation time (not including updates, but if they're all the same, one PC can be built and then imaged and then this can then be put onto all the other PCs as well)
So for 8 PCs you're probably looking at at least 20 hours labour for all of that. Nevermind that you're just unnecessarily upgrading pretty poor PCs already. £40 per hour is about £800 labour. So £2k just to upgrade old PCs, and the result will be that they're still going to be pretty rubbish because those CPUs will let you down so much. It isn't worth it at all...
Playing devils advocate I can understand where the support company are coming from.
The cost of supplying 8 new Windows 7 64bit licenses and installing them onto workstations then configuring them isn't going to be negligible, and when all's said and done you will still have 8 old computers running an OS that becomes obsolete in 2.5 years.
Compared to simply buying 8 new machines with Windows 10 64 and configuring them the argument could be made that it would be irresponsible for the company to not recommend the latter even if it costs more as it's the better option for the customer.
The cost of supplying 8 new Windows 7 64bit licenses and installing them onto workstations then configuring them isn't going to be negligible, and when all's said and done you will still have 8 old computers running an OS that becomes obsolete in 2.5 years.
Compared to simply buying 8 new machines with Windows 10 64 and configuring them the argument could be made that it would be irresponsible for the company to not recommend the latter even if it costs more as it's the better option for the customer.
Agreed
Covered above, they already have the licenses.
As an aside they're no longer available new, unless you exercise downgrade rights from an appropriate Windows 10. Extended support for Windows 7 ends 14th January 2020, so c.18 months.
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Someone local on here who knows about networks might help you out if you ask? It's only 8 PCs.
8x windows 10 64 bit licences, 1 Image, 8 sets of ram.
Shouldn't actually take that long to be fair once the main image is created.
8x windows 10 64 bit licences, 1 Image, 8 sets of ram.
Shouldn't actually take that long to be fair once the main image is created.
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Still dont think its worthwhile even if its being done for free.
Those pcs really are rubbish and putting a bit of lipstick on them aint going to help, yes an ssd will make the most difference but at the end of the day they are still going to suck.
Bite the bullet and buy new boxes imho, its cheaper and more future proof....
Would love to see one of the dual core pentiums trying to run mcafee in the background... help ma bob..its bad enough on stuff from the last 12 months let alone some of them.
Those pcs really are rubbish and putting a bit of lipstick on them aint going to help, yes an ssd will make the most difference but at the end of the day they are still going to suck.
Bite the bullet and buy new boxes imho, its cheaper and more future proof....
Would love to see one of the dual core pentiums trying to run mcafee in the background... help ma bob..its bad enough on stuff from the last 12 months let alone some of them.
Probably best going to someone like Dell and making a deal for a bunch of new PCs tbh
With outsourced IT support it will never be cheap though. They'll probably do half a job much of the time too. There is a reason a lot of companies have gone back to in-house IT
With outsourced IT support it will never be cheap though. They'll probably do half a job much of the time too. There is a reason a lot of companies have gone back to in-house IT
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Soldato
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Yep. My company of ~40-45 people has outsourced IT who either do the most minimal band-aid fix, or refuse outright. Good example is our cabled LAN: several parts of the room have unreliable ports, but instead of sorting out the root cause they simply demand which port is bad and remap that. Cue the same problem a month later.With outsourced IT support it will never be cheap though. They'll probably do half a job much of the time too. There is a reason a lot of companies have gone back to in-house IT
So now me and my colleague who are the most recent recruits have had IT support tacked onto our role.
I've learned to dread the phrase "While you're here..."
I was wondering about this in small companies, it probably does make sense to have some people in other roles get skilled up a bit to cover some IT support task. Though I wonder if in some cases this might be to supplement some outsources support contract - like you don't want people having to interrupt their day with minor help desk tasks but things that require a physical presence on site and are non urgent or outside the scope of a support contract could be useful.
Nail on head! There's always been something not quite working/finished.
Anyway, to try and answer the multitude of answers, Yes the machines aren't great spec but they don't get worked that hard in general. So I'm surprised how much they struggle at times.
We all use 2 screens and I have Spotify on mine too.(mine is particularly bad) and I may be mistaken but I put all the "not responding" and programs taking ages to open/close as a ram issue (It says 2.9Gb usable) and task manager shows ram maxed a lot of the time. So it felt like a ram issue.
I just thought installing W-64 was going to be the cheap easy option to get extra ram available. Obviously I was wrong
So I was surprised with the answer I received - (And pretty shocked tbh, as it's indicative of our wasteful society if buying 8 pcs is cheaper than reinstalling some software... but that's another discussion!)
What about if I got a cheap video card and sound card, would that free up the cpu, or doesn't it work that way?
I work for an IT company who do outsourced support for other companies (although I dont work in the support side). It's massively more efficient for us to do the job properly: proactively monitor servers and networks and keep everything updated.
We charge our clients a fixed monthly amount for support though, so it's better for us to fix issues properly and be quiet. If you're paying for your support on a PAYG basis then it's in their interest not to fix things properly and always keep a backlog of work so that they don't have any downtime which isn't billable.
Really?
Ex corporate IT guy here.
The first part is correct; the second part, well, that depends. You do NOT need to pay for new licenses if you stick with the current PCs. Are you running Windows Server Essentials?
The key question here is, "How much downtime can you afford?" Think about what would happen if the upgrade were to go wrong. What if it were to go horribly wrong? Think about the business aspects, not the technical ones.
This is, in fact, a lot of work. Each PC will have to be rebuilt, the RAM upgraded, and all the applications reinstalled and all the data restored (hopefully there's none). This is a time-consuming process. If you have all new PCs everything can be done off-site and the new PCs plugged in in one morning. And if something's not working, you just plug the old PC back in while you fix the problems.
Ask your IT support what changes she would make. For instance, if you have desktops or towers, could you switch to NUCs and save on desk or floor space? I presume you do rent your offices, and each square foot counts.
Another way of doing it is switching over gradually, perhaps 2 PCs at a time in your case. This is expensive in time, of course. A variation on that is to buy 2 new PCs and swap them in, then rotate the pulled PCs to the next 2 and so on.
Remember above all that this is a business issue more than a technical issue.
What he said. Proactive is the way to be, otherwise you're shooting yourself in the foot.
But yeah not all msp are the same.
For what it's worth though I agree that it's not going to be cost effective vs new machines. And as others have said you'll be polishing a turd with those pc.
Buying new machines would still involve a callout to attach back to domain and reinstall programs / transfer data?
The only thing you're saving cost on is reinstalling a workstation os with drivers. 1-1.5 hours labour.
I'm not saying new machines isn't what I would recommend here, because I would. It's just they're making out new pc's are the cheaper route. When it's not, it's just the sensible route as they're unhappy with the performance of the current machines.
I would have worded it differently.
"The amount of labour and parts costs required to upgrade your existing machines to a 64 bit os would be near or exceed the cost of a new machine. A newer machine would benefit you in more ways, as all components are upgraded rather than just ram. In either event there would be a fresh operating system and the configuration, software and data would all need to be transferred / installed."
The only thing you're saving cost on is reinstalling a workstation os with drivers. 1-1.5 hours labour.
I'm not saying new machines isn't what I would recommend here, because I would. It's just they're making out new pc's are the cheaper route. When it's not, it's just the sensible route as they're unhappy with the performance of the current machines.
I would have worded it differently.
"The amount of labour and parts costs required to upgrade your existing machines to a 64 bit os would be near or exceed the cost of a new machine. A newer machine would benefit you in more ways, as all components are upgraded rather than just ram. In either event there would be a fresh operating system and the configuration, software and data would all need to be transferred / installed."
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Deleted member 651465
Deleted member 651465
If they struggle to run 32bit then 64bit is going to require more ram... ergo, it’ll be worse.
Nothing worthwhile for an office machine. The integrated devices are more than sufficient.
The reason the current machines are not responding when physical RAM is exhausted is because it's paging less recently used data out to virtual memory which is on a slow mechanical hard drive.
