The real cost of a slow computer
If a slow or misbehaving computer costs 25 minutes of disruption to a staff-member every day on average it adds up to 90 hours a year of lost time per employee that uses that machine. This cost dwarfs that of our Full Health Check or even an Office-wide SSD upgrade which would have machines booting up in seconds.
Over time Windows installations do degrade in performance, spyware and unwanted applications get installed swelling the Windows Registry with unneeded data, virus damage occurs, system libraries get corrupted preventing all security updates, or hard disks can start to error with age.
Remote support can only go so far in tweaking performance and dealing with these issues. We can do a much better job with hands-on work.
Interim Health Check
An interim check should be conducted at least annually, this HC consists of:
- Physically cleaning machines removing internal dust that can cause overheating and crashes or hardware failure.
- Install and run various clean-up and rootkit/malware detection software on each machine.
- Clean up user profiles and delete those that are unneeded.
- Optimise each machine for performance on the network.
- Perform network audit and do all the work we cannot do remotely on the server and key devices such as the physical clean.
- Optionally we will upgrade memory (not Hard Drives) and update the PAT test certificate on the machines and peripherals such as printers or switches.
Disruption
The Engineer will need between 1 and 2 hours per computer so users will need to be able to vacate their workstations (and their login profiles so they cannot log in elsewhere) for up to 2 consecutive hours on the day. As far as possible we will schedule the times so as not to disrupt the whole day for everyone.
Costs
It takes the engineer an average of 1 hour per PC, so for example, if you have 5-10 PC’s, we will need one full Engineer Day for the works (8 hours). Weekends are possible too but charged at time + half.
Outcome
More responsive machines and enhanced productivity for users.
Overhaul Health Check
We recommend this every 2-3 years. It involves installing the newest version of your OS (such as Windows) on all workstations, along with the latest releases of all the software in use. This type of Health Check is most suited to:
- occasions when you are doing major software upgrades (such as getting new versions of Windows or Libre/MSOffice) or adopting new software company-wide.
- After a severe network-transmitted virus infestation on more than one workstation.
- Undertaking major workstation changes such as upgrading hard drives or moving to SSD (Solid State) which will give you a 50-75% performance increase.
Since this is a complete re-install of all machines and all data on the machines we will need to gather locally installed user data and programs beforehand for recovery to machines after the re-install. Then we’ll need sole and complete access to the network and machines for at least 1 day. We can do this on a weekend. We will need a full day after the overhaul as contingency in case something goes wrong so best not to schedule this if you have deadlines looming.
Disruption
Normally our team will need sole access to the network and machines for a day. Often we conduct these on a Friday so we have the weekend to deal with contingencies. Some extra work from users customising their installations to their preference may be required initially but enhanced productivity for users thereafter.
Costs
To do a full HC on 5-20 machines will take between 2.5 and 3.5 engineer days.
Professional 250GB SSD drives average about £90 each, 500GB SSD drives are around £130.
For example to overhaul a network of 15 machines over a weekend will cost around 3 engineer days, upgrading them all to SSD will add around £1250 to that cost.
Outcome
Machines behaving as new with all software up to date.