We’ll start this one by first defining what "ancient crappy PC" means.
Concerning the hardware, it is any PC over 5 years old. Any PC in the workplace over 5 years old is obviously owned by the company as no OEM would dare lease computer boxes for over that length of time, due to the fact the liability is too great.
Concerning the software, it is any OS that is not supported directly by the OEM any longer, with the keyword being directly. It also counts for any apps/programs used that are no longer supported.
When you put the above two together, you’ve got yourself an ancient crappy PC. This is the computer that literally takes 5 minutes or longer to boot due not only to the crappiness of the PC itself but also the network it connects to. Doing anything on this computer is an exercise in patience, and a whole lot of patience at that.
Many who have to deal with computers like this in the workplace often wonder, "Doesn’t this slow down productivity by having to wait for the stupid computer to do things all the time? Wouldn’t it be worth the cost to at least upgrade the PCs being they’re so cheap these days?"
These are legitimate valid concerns. But there are reasons why these oh-so craptastic computer boxes stay around:
1. Nobody is complaining.
When nobody complains as to how slow the computers are, upper management thinks everything is A-OK and that nothing needs to be done.
Why is it more people don’t complain? The answer is simple: They don’t want to lose their jobs by being labeled as a complainer.
2. The department (supposedly) has no budget for new computers.
You will notice certain departments (usually Finance, Sales and, of course, Marketing) always seem to get nice fast newer computers while you’re left to suffer with junk. This is because the department has no money for PCs, either for real or fabricated reasons.
If you’re wondering what a fabricated reason is for "we have no money for new computers," all you have to do is look around your department to see if there are any new/shiny things around that serve no legitimate business purpose for what your dept. does – such as your boss outfitting his or her office with all brand-new expensive furniture that absolutely wasn’t needed. Now you know where the money went.
3. It’s a "home grown" app made by somebody who doesn’t work there anymore.
You may have this specific program at work that makes you grit your teeth every time you have to use it. Is it so old that you’re surprised your computer doesn’t gag and wheeze every time you run it. This app crashes constantly and no matter how often you complain, nobody is able to fix it.
"Home grown" programs you use made by employees of the company who coded it in-house (meaning in-company) originally. But those employees are long gone. They either quit or retired long ago and there is nobody left to support these dinosaurs any longer. Not only that, but nobody wants to put the time, effort, or spend the money to convert these dinosaurs over to newer, more efficient and moreover supported systems.
On top of all that, this is also part of the reason the company refuses to upgrade anybody’s desktop OS because they have absolutely no clue whether that home grown app will work on XP, never mind Windows 7!
There is unfortunately nothing you can do about this except hope for a major system crash server-side that forces the company to fix it.
4. Prevention of in-office political bickering.
This is when departments refuse to upgrade anything just to keep people from yelling at each other.
"Well, John got a new computer. Why can’t I?"
You can see how this would turn into a bicker-fest in short order. If John gets a new PC, then Bob has to get one. When Debbie see that, she wants one. And so does Alice. And Tom. And so on.
There are times more often than not when upgrades don’t happen just to keep the peace. Personally I think this is a rather stupid thing to do, because there’s no excuse considering how utterly cheap new boxes are these days. Yes, it does cost time to set them up and "vanilla" them, but c’mon.. just get new boxes and be done with it already.
5. Slowness of computers allows those in charge to be lazy.
There are department heads who are very happy to keep things just as they are, slowness and all – even if they do have the budget for new PCs. This is so they can take two-hour lunches and simply not worry about it since there’s no way anybody would be finished with whatever it is they’re doing by the time he or she comes back.
See, the deal is that a boss really doesn’t want to hear how you could be more productive with a new computer. But if a new computer allowed the boss to do less work and be even more lazy, then you’ll probably have a new PC on your desk next week! Sad but true.
Do you have slow crappy computers in your school or office?
I’m betting you do. Tell us your tales of woe.
No plan in place to upgrade your department’s PC’s could also mean your group is on the short list for pink slips
Here at the public library some of our staff still have to use ancient crappy PCs. They have to wait minutes for booting up, and sometimes almost a minute or so for an app to open. They suffer through it admirably, and I don’t hear too much complaining, not that there’s anything I could do about it anyway. There won’t be any money for new staff machines for a while.
Rich, you really hit the nail on the head this time.
My wife works for a CPA firm what has nothing but old crappy computers. Her monitor used to be a blurry 17 inch monitor that gave her headaches because her eyes were always trying to focus while looking at it. Keep in mind here that she has to look at IRS forms, Excel spreadsheets and other specialized accounting software all day long.
So a few years ago, we both decided to upgrade our monitors at home to a couple of Dell 24 inch monitors. We took the 21 LCD inch monitor that was being replaced and put it on her desk at work. Boy, the you know what hit the fan. She was not in trouble but it sure made her bosses look like cheapskates and made a few employees envious. Nobody stopped her because everyone knew the firms monitor was crap. For her bosses to tell her she could not use her own monitor at work would have made them have looked bad.
I think another reason businesses hold on to old computers is that that they fear changing anything that might disrupt productivity. This comes from ignorance or even fear of computers.
At the university I work for, they will not upgrade to Vista out of fear of having problems. But then, they might have a legitimate point.
As for my computer at work, I am stuck with an ancient Shuttle and a tiny LCD monitor. Fortunately, all I ever use it for is emails and running Excel and Word.
I’ve seen a few instances where employees that are absolutely sick of the old hardware decide to simply bring in their own. This is nothing but sad when this happens.
The only sure-fire way that usually makes management move is if you specifically request new hardware for health reasons (as in you get headaches, hurt wrists, etc. from existing peripherals.) The reason it’s sure-fire is because the company doesn’t want to get sued for subjecting the employee to an unsafe environment.
If you’ve tried everything else to get your hardware refreshed with something built in the last DECADE but nothing has worked, citing health reasons usually will.
We have a slew of crappy Win2k computers. I try my best not to give them to permanent employees. Usually contractors end up using them…which is probably not real smart either, but at least opportunity for complaints decrease, ha ha.
But your’e right on. And the in-office bickering is a real deal. I’ve never seen how fast grown ups can turn into 2 year olds than equipment upgrades. At my last company when they started upgrading CRTs to LCDs, chaos ensued. I didn’t even care about upgrading, but had to because my CRT died, but man, the jealousy. It got so bad that LCDs that were put into conference room were swiped within days.
How appropriate I was just dealing with one this morning
Add one more factor – Conversion Costs. You allude to it in point 3. Even replacing one PC with the same OS creates conversion costs in migrating the apps and data to the new PC. If it includes a new OS, another bag of conversion costs is opened. Compatibility of apps, the need to upgrade apps, training of users and support staff, compatibility of backup and historical data, etc. In a large company, upgrading of an OS may require all PC’s to be upgraded at the same time. What about peripherals? Some of these may not work in the new OS and must be upgraded or replaced. These conversion costs do not add to productivity or to company profits but are a cost of doing business that is avoided by management until it is necessary.
The whole upgrade problem must be addressed sometime as equipment ages and wears out. Our management recognizes this but in today’s economics we cannot afford the change. We have an ad hoc committee researching the subject hoping to come up with a reasonable plan. In the meantime, we replace old PC’s with new or slightly used PC’s that use our standard OS
The easiest way to migrate to newer PCs while still keeping the old apps is to simply use emulation software. This was done in the early days to connect to mainframes using a terminal emulation software title called Reflections. The modern variant of this is called AttachMate: http://www.attachmate.com
If it’s a Windows-based app that will not run in XP, Vista or 7, the solution is to simply server-farm it. This can be done the cheap way with VNC or the proper way with Citrix (their XenServer software is free.)
And of course the best option is to get your apps delivered by the browser, even if intranet-based. If the end user PC has its primary apps delivered via the network in the form of an internet web-based app, the PC is essentially a dumb terminal – and that’s good because it can be easily replaced if it breaks with minimal setup involved for the new box, should that occur.
As far as the employee learning curve goes, there is no way to avoid it. However if there’s one thing that’s absolutely true, you will spend more by not upgrading sooner. Using dinosaur-era hardware and software is a short-term gain, long-term loss. Using modern software, hardware and peripherals is a short-term loss (setup, cost, etc.), long-term gain.
most organisations i know of, still use them simply because they still suit the needs they were originally intended to fill.
although most are starting to upgrade – we’re talking 25+ year old rigs in some cases! they’re hanging onto the old ones in the event of equipment failure, so theyve got the old reliables ready to go if needbe.
I don’t get what’s with all the boss-hating. Maybe my company’s different, but my boss is incredibly competent and was promoted from within our group so he knows what everyone’s dealing with. And this is from someone at the very bottom of the ladder in engineering. Our VP is technical enough to take a Master’s level class in acoustics, and the President has a Bachelor’s in EE and Master’s in Mech E, or the other way around. Not all bosses are lazy, incompetent jerks. Maybe just most