At the company where I worked before (60,000 employees) and where I work now (30) that wasn't the case in either one (could be different public vs private, though) . The total cost of owning a PC is less, and our users are all familiar users, so we don't have any real issues (in terms of ease of use). It's a requirement of the job (I am not a programmer, though). Companies are very aware of the total cost of using and supporting a PC, and if a PC becomes too expensive to support because it's junk, they will dump them. An exact case of this at the large company where I used to work is dumping dell and going to lenovo. Lenovos were slightly more expensive at the time, but far more reliable.Originally Posted by Jim Koepke
Where I work now, it appears our hardware budget (monitor and all) is about $1000 per user every four years. Every once in a great while, we'll have to replace a PC because it junks out. We have been using dell again where I work, because they atoned for their sins and stopped making the garbage they were making around 2004 when they decided cutting costs was more important than anything else.
Yeah, we don't do the overclock things any longer. It's not worth the trouble, I'd rather have cheap and functional. I got a refurb laptop the last time I got a PC, and at the time a mac equivalent (processing power and memory) was three times as expensive. The same reason that I use PCs is the reason we overclocked back then. In 1997 or so, macs were junk (at least their OS was, which makes the computer kind of crappy) and more expensive than PCs, and if you wanted top line performance, the P3 450 at the time was top dog. It also cost (for the processor only) $750, but intel made a cheap chip called the celeron that could be clocked to 450 like the expensive pIII, and it ran most applications just as fast, despite some slight differences in architecture - as long as it was overclocked. It cost $64 for each of us to get one at the time, and I had built an entire gaming PC for less than the cost of the top line chip.A good friend of mine is a network engineer and computer guru.
It seems his biggest problem interfacing with people has been an inability to realize they do not understand computers as well as he does. He has been getting better at his human interfacing over the years. He can go on for hours telling me why I should over clock my machine or do some other fancy stuff. I listen, smile and drink a few beers. In the end, my clock speed stays the same and my computer runs fast enough for me.
Maybe such things exist now, but it's not what I'm into. I'm glad to have had that experience, it saved me money then and it saves me money now. I can waste that money on tools and sharpening stones...and nice wood. Don't tell my wife I said that.
(I know plenty of types like the friend of yours that you describe. If they don't play golf, i start to tell them why they should be so interested in ben hogan and how ben hogan believes every golf swing should be made).
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