Inside Small Business | Small Business & Home Business Marketing

How old is old?

David Grenda, Founder, Grenda Computer Consulting

Computers these days pack a lot of power in terms of memory, disk space, and the speed of their processors. Even a low end model generally has enough horsepower to run most office applications just fine. This was not always so. Up until about 10 years ago, there were a lot of software packages out there that taxed a general desktop computer to its limits. Now you only find this in heavy graphics applications that require specialized hardware in a computer.

There are different schools of thought regarding how long a computer should be considered to have a useful life. The general rule is that you should consider rotating your desktops on a 4 year cycle. This ensures that the hardware running your business will not get old enough to fail.

This is of particular importance as Windows Vista is making its way onto our desktops. Vista has hardware requirements that many computers running Windows XP do not meet. It would be better to have a rotation plan in place than to have to address a number of upgrades all at the same time.

If you would like further guidance in considering the options, feel free to drop me an email at david@grenda.com.

Posted on Monday, November 3rd, 2008 at 8:49 am and is filed under Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.