>I like when people assume that the only reason you have old tech in >the office is just because you're too lazy to buy the latest and the >greatest. Sometimes it's just because the best you can hope for is to >replace 1/3 of your computers each year and maybe get one or 2 new >printers or fax machines as they die off. It seems to me that real >businesses are always playing catch up if they have to stay within >budgets no matter how much more productive the new toys are alledged >to be.
Nope. A well managed business knows that hardware has a limited life. This is something that must be managed for the business to prosper. As you get past the life limit all sorts of bad things start to happen. One is an increased failure rate. This hurts two ways: lost productivity and hightened repair costs. When you can't rely on your equipment it is hard to plan and keep projects on schedule. Even when things don't fail there are all sorts of other costs that creep in, but won't be obvious to a poor manager. One is the example that started this thread: the extra time and cost in getting new equipment that still supports obsolete standards. Another is getting different generations of hardware to work together. Another is keeping support staff that knows both the old stuff and the new stuff. Support takes longer when support staff has to support many versions that have different odd bits of information that have to be remembered. You may not be able to run the same software across different generations of hardware. It makes it harder to interoperate or the shift work around. Keeping old hardware around creates a real mess. Managers who don't understand this are not good managers and are causing great losses for their businesses. ************************************************************************ * ==> QUICK LIST-COMMAND REFERENCE - Put the following commands in <== * ==> the body of an email & send 'em to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <== * Join the list: SUBSCRIBE COMPUTERGUYS-L Your Name * Too much mail? Try Daily Digests command: SET COMPUTERGUYS-L DIGEST * Tired of the List? Unsubscribe command: SIGNOFF COMPUTERGUYS-L * New address? From OLD address send: CHANGE COMPUTERGUYS-L YourNewAddress * Need more help? Send mail to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ************************************************************************ * List archive at www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ * RSS at www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml * Messages bearing the header "X-No-Archive: yes" will not be archived ************************************************************************
