How do you turn over your machines?

workaccount · 13-07-2007 11:54am #1

We have about 50 machines here in the office I'm working in and machines are only replaced when they become very slow and the user starts complaining. It's a pain for supporting and we want to roll out office 2007 aswell which is going to be nightmare given the setup.

Shouldn't they be turned over every three years or so though?
How is this done in your organisation?

petes · 13-07-2007 11:56am

More or less every three years.

Duggy747 · 13-07-2007 12:00pm

Yea, give or take every 3 years. The Project leader here got a serious PC the other day for his office as well as a BIG-ASS widescreen monitor, bastard!!

Anti · 13-07-2007 12:13pm

Once a year or less here.

AlmightyCushion · 13-07-2007 1:45pm

Duggy747 wrote:

Yea, give or take every 3 years. The Project leader here got a serious PC the other day for his office as well as a BIG-ASS widescreen monitor, bastard!!

A few of the lads in our office just got brand spanking new laptops and a second monitor. I want one.

Creamy Goodness · 13-07-2007 1:47pm

Anti wrote:

Once a year or less here.

where you work if you don't mind me asking?

Anti · 13-07-2007 1:59pm

Cremo wrote:

where you work if you don't mind me asking?

M$

Dummy · 13-07-2007 2:14pm

One side of the building is still using Radio Shack TRS-80's (1* 10 inch floppy)and Admin Dept is using ZX-80's. The boss (lucky guy) uses a Sanyo MAC-555 (no hdd but 2 * 5 1/4 inch floppies).

OK - only joking !! We change every 2 or 3 years.

mathias · 13-07-2007 2:21pm

The company I work for changes every 3 years on the dot , there is even a countdown for replacement , old machines are given to local schools and charities , minus the hard drives ,
The company has a " No hard drive leaves here " policy , they are shredded ! I kid you not !!

AlmightyCushion · 13-07-2007 2:24pm

mathias wrote:

The company has a " No hard drive leaves here " policy , they are shredded ! I kid you not !!

Any company that may have sensitive data on the hard drive would/should do the same or something similar.

workaccount · 13-07-2007 3:07pm

mathias wrote:

The company I work for changes every 3 years on the dot , there is even a countdown for replacement , old machines are given to local schools and charities , minus the hard drives ,
The company has a " No hard drive leaves here " policy , they are shredded ! I kid you not !!

In less than 2hrs you can overwrite your disk with random bit patterns which is approved by the US DoD!

Duggy747 · 13-07-2007 3:14pm

AlmightyCushion wrote:

Any company that may have sensitive data on the hard drive would/should do the same or something similar.

Or would have something interesting to hide

AlmightyCushion · 13-07-2007 4:14pm

Duggy747 wrote:

Or would have something interesting to hide

It took me hours to download all that p0rn and I'll be damned if someone gets thier grubby little mits on it.

prospect · 13-07-2007 4:19pm

We have 40 odd pcs, 10 of which are in a design office. The design team get upgraded every year, and their old machines are sent down to the next most (software) demanding dept, and so on down the chain.
They last in our offices 4 years at most.

Capt'n Midnight · 13-07-2007 11:25pm

In an ideal world you'd swap the machines down every year from those for whom power is critical, to those who use the pc's all the time, to those who just need email and documents to the ones that are for people who just use a computer the odd time. As I keep telling saying, people can't type any faster than they could 20 years ago.

As for wiping - dban does the job, and you choose how many times you want to run it, but it won't overwrite bad sectors already swapped out by the hard drives' own controller so there may still be tiny bits of data accessible. Then again a no-disk policy should stop screw-ups.

leeroybrown · 13-07-2007 11:50pm

Office hardware is upgraded required but not in a stingy fashion. If something needs to be bought or upgraded then it happens.

A previous employer had a rather sluggish machine upgrade policy. After I left I decided that if I turned up to a job again to find that I'd be using a slow creaking PC with a crap monitor and outdated software I'd just turn around and walk out. I was doing software dev work and the amount of extra time I had to waste due to slow compiles (when it wasn't practical to distract myself) would have payed for a new PC and software every 18 months.

As for disposition. We keep the LCD's in use. We've got a small staff size so we keep the PC's as test boxes. All hard disks that might have any sensitive data are wiped with either dban or shred. The office hardware is the minor part of our disposition problem anyway...

How do you turn over your machines?

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