A client typically runs their PC's until they die. They lose a lot of time and money this way. They are a small shop with around 10 employees. They are interested in implementing a refresh cycle. Some googling shows the average/optimal refresh rate currently seems to be 3 years and this article makes a decent case for it:
http://www.cbronline.com/blogs/technology/whats-the-optimal-time-to-refresh-your-pc-estate Assuming that is correct we face another issue. Over half of the employees are permanently remote telecommuters (which makes support much more difficult) for whom the company has traditionally bought PC hardware and shipped it to them. They inevitably use their own PCs for personal use (risky behaviors causing problems which inevitably get shifted onto the company) and there is no way to enforce that they do not. I lean towards the idea of specifying what sorts of tasks the remote users be capable of doing (connecting to our VPN, browing the web, doing email, scp files, etc.), giving them a PC/support stipend, and letting them deal with their own hardware and support as a consequence of being remote. This should give them an incentive to be careful with their tools and spend resources wisely. Potential problems with this idea are that the sales guy may still be completely unable to manage this even if he has the option of hiring a local PC consultant and that it may be perceived as the sysadmin based in the home office trying to get out of doing painful remote desktop support which he really can't do well anyway. In addition there is the fact that a precedent has been set where the company buys and ships hardware to the employee who now feels entitled to such hardware even though it is also their primary personal use machine. Opinions? -- Tracy Reed
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