Getting more from your PC

By ADAM GIFFORD


It used to be a welcome ritual - every couple of years a new PC would appear on the desk, able to run the latest Microsoft operating system and office programs.

But sometime not too long ago, Moore's Law caught up - the observation that the number of circuits on a silicon chip double every 18 months and its price halves.

That means people are being asked to use their machines for longer. So how long is too long, and what should people push for in their next refresh?

Scott Green from services company Axon says the three-year standard for refreshing equipment has fallen away.

"We are seeing some organisations keeping their desktops four years, and keeping the server refresh at three. Others are the opposite - four years for servers and three for desktops," he says.

"It is largely a reflection of their technology path. If they centralise management so their applications run on thin clients, server performance is more important."

It comes down to applications. If your job depends on applications which can happily live on the desktop, having computer power close to hand is important.

More process oriented tasks or systems, which may be feeding a large transaction-processing application on a centralised computer, will suit the thin client model - a PC or standalone device connected to the servers by technology like Terminal Server or Citrix, which do away with the need for a hard drive close at hand.

"You also have the application refresh cycle, how often do you need to refresh to take advantage of the latest technology?" Green says.

"That always used to be a driver for change, especially with firms using Microsoft applications, but it has been less important in the past 18 months."

A desktop PC with 512MB of RAM and a Pentium 4 processor will be sufficient for most office users, but Green says Microsoft is still out there pushing new functionality which could force a hardware upgrade.

"It is mainly about integrating applications and moving to group collaboration around the Sharepoint portal, all of which requires the latest version of their particular applications," Green says.

"It is about creating a dynamic workspace, where people can look at documents, modify them, and push them back to the server again. There is a lot more sharing of information between the back end and the front end."

International Data Corporation analyst Liam Gunson says some corporates are pushing the life of desktop machines out to five years, perhaps upgrading memory or replacing peripherals like keyboards and screens along the way.

Indeed, with refresh cycles slowing, people may be pushing for a shift to the new, flat liquid crystal displays which take up less space and power and are easier to work with.

"There is an upgrade and hand-me-down process, so machines get moved around the organisation. We are also seeing refreshes where instead of bringing in new PCs they put in thin clients," Gunson says.

"We haven't seen any killer applications on the market to drive a hardware refresh."

He says in the second quarter ending June 30, traditionally the strongest quarter for the New Zealand market, IDC measured desktop sales at 97,879 units, 8 per cent up on the same quarter last year.

"There is talk of a shift from desktop machines to laptops, but the numbers show the main growth in portables is on the consumer and small business side. We are not seeing it in the large corporates. There, the people who have laptops are generally mobile staff or people higher up in the organisation, and sales there are replacing laptops with laptops."

Server growth was also up 26 per cent in the quarter to 5018 units, a sign of the move to thin client technology in some quarters, although the market is expecting some consolidation because of new Microsoft server technology which allows servers to be divided into four virtual servers, allowing multiple applications to run on the same hardware.

Meanwhile, the whole refresh process has got easier.

Green says rather than have large teams of technicians replacing hardware and painstakingly configuring each machine, modern tools and operating systems now allow Axon to get the new machines delivered on to a customer site by third-party technical couriers.

Once they are plugged into the network, Axon can load the required corporate desktop and applications remotely.

That means less break-fix work and fewer entry-level positions in the industry.

"Things like system boards are now more integrated, so fewer individual elements can fail," Green says.

"There is greater reliability at the operating system layer, and there is a lot more ability for us to talk things through with the user over the phone to do roll-backs, so it has reduced the situation where you need a workshop repair."