Infrastructure: PCs (IT Assessment DIY Guide, Part 10)
This is part 10 of a series on IT Self-Assessment for small businesses. We’re providing information and guidelines for a simple IT check, giving you the ability to gain free insights into how your technology can serve your business better. Each post covers a critical area of technology.
Infrastructure: PCs
Function & Value
The personal computer is everywhere. For most businesses, it is as essential as a phone and a business card. Maybe more so. PCs enable, connect, and extend. PCs serve as a platform for nearly everything a knowledge worker does.
These days, PCs are cheap. But maintaining them is not. Neither is a lost day of work when one breaks. Here are the most common problems that lead to expensive maintenance and lost work, and how to ensure your PCs are reliable.
Common Problems
(1) Non-standardized operating systems. If you are the do-it-yourself type, or your IT person is, you’ll have a mishmash of PCs and Windows versions throughout your office. It seems like you are saving money by using available resources so well. But chances are, you’re not. A mishmash of PCs means added confusion when troubleshooting, more things that can break, and a host of networking problems. On office networks, any Home version of Microsoft Windows causes problems. Home’s networking capabilities are limited.
(2) Aging machines. PCs have a life span of three to five years. A PC may still be powerful enough to do what you need, but the chances of hardware failure increase greatly after a few years.
(3) Too much time and cost spent on maintenance. The cost of purchasing a PC is much less than the cost of keeping a limping PC going. In general, the purchase cost of a PC is only 20% of what that machine will cost your business over its lifespan. Non-standardize and old machines are time and money pits.
(4) No centralized management and access control. If user accounts and file stores are scattered across the PCs in your office, your options are limited when passwords are lost or employees leave. It can be difficult to regain access to a machine or the data on that machine. If an employee or ex-employee uses encryption on their data store, information could be lost forever.
Best Practices
(1) Standardize operating systems. Always use professional versions, and, as much as possible, make them all the same. For most businesses right now, that means XP Pro, with Windows 7 as the next upgrade. Vista should be avoided. Working on a single platform provides a constant variable in supporting and maintaining your machines. Since IT won’t have to track down problems with three or more operating systems, you’ll save money.
(2) Have an Evergreen policy and budget. Evergreen policies schedule PC replacement over a three to five year cycle, replacing 1/3 to 1/5 of your PCs every year. Staggering upgrades every year ensures you don’t end up with ancient, ailing machines and have to face a costly, full-scale replacement.
(3) Use an image for similar PCs. A PC image is an operating system, settings and common applications bundled together into a disk image that can be quickly applied to any PC. When a PC has problems, have IT re-image the PC and start over fresh. This takes 60 minutes, as opposed to spending an unknown number of hours trying to find and resolve the issue. If your staff is storing all data on the file server, no data should be lost during a re-image.
(4) Use domain logons, not PC logons. Domain logons give you centralized profile management and access control, so PC access and data storage is always under your control.
PC Self-Assessment
Number of PCs:
Operating system(s) in use:
Average age of PCs:
Is an Evergreen policy and budget in place?
Is a PC image used?
Are domain logons in use?
Level of risk to your business based upon current PC use:
High Medium Low
Issues to be addressed:
1.
2.
3.
