6 Ways new technology can save your business time and money!

It can be tempting to avoid new purchases when dealing with a shrinking budget or a need to cut expenses. When it comes to your office’s computer equipment, however, delaying a PC refresh can actually increase your operating expenses. Maintenance and support costs go up significantly over time, and productivity can go down.

Learn about the major costs associated with maintaining and supporting PCs and the six ways in which a PC refresh can benefit your business. 

1. Save on repair costs
For most businesses, it’s best to replace aging equipment rather than repair it. 

Maintenance costs on PCs more than three years old can run nearly two and half times higher than on a new PC [1]. From software crashes to hard drive failure, a lot can go wrong as a computer ages. 

2. Increase productivity
When your computers work more efficiently, so do you and your staff. Faster processors, such as the Intel® Core 2™ Duo and Intel® vPro™ technology can operate up to six times faster than a three-year old Intel® Pentium® processor. In the case of an Intel® VPro™ PC, users experience 32 percent less system downtime.

With a newer PC, you also can multitask up to three times faster. For example, a new Intel® Centrino® 2 P8600-based notebook can compress a video, convert a document to PDF and perform a virus scan continuously in the background 30 percent faster than a two-year-old Intel® Centrino® 2 T2700-based notebook. Even simple Microsoft Excel calculations are two times faster.

3. Ensure security 
A big part of downtime and subsequent productivity loss is due to security issues. A four-year-old PC will have 53 percent more security incidents than a PC in its first year. Incidents include viruses, service denials and network attacks. Additionally, it costs more to resolve security issues in older PCs, especially when a business has a lot of variability in the hardware it uses [2]. IT staff must deal with: 

• Ever increasing exposure to malware
• Complexity related to the build-up of applications over time
• Systems that don’t have the memory to support new software upgrades (like Windows 7 which was just released)

In fact, fixing security issues in a new PC costs half as much as that in a five-year-old system. New PCs deal with security threats better as well. Most have built-in technology to improve security, such programmable defense filters and tools that automatically isolate an infected PC from the network before it can infect other PCs.

4. Reduce energy use
With PCs making up for 40 percent of a company’s average utility bill, an upgrade to newer, more green PC can seriously improve your bottom line. Improved energy efficiency can also help your company meet local, state and federal energy compliance regulations. 

Many new desktops and laptops are ENERGY STAR® 4.0 qualified. ENERGY STAR 5.0 is also now available on select machines and this means power supplies are up to 85 percent efficient, and idle wattage times meet certain energy-efficiency standards.

5. Go mobile 
If you’re wondering how to maximize your investments in upgrades, going mobile is a good place to start. If you are like the more than 50 percent of small businesses and 90 percent of medium-sized businesses that report having employees who travel four to five times a month for business, mobility is no longer a luxury. 

6. Improve your image
Finally, new technology can do a lot to grow your business and help you to attract more customers through improved business processes and efficiencies. These enhancements can:

• Streamline your online sales
• Increase communication and contact with your customers
• Make it easier to access and process information 

“A White Paper Cost of Maintaining PCs.” Techaisle. Q1 2009.