File loading ... loading ... the cost of buying cheap computers, unfit for their roles

Think about your typical workday. Do you work with spreadsheets a lot? How about doing research on Web sites? Do you work with databases? How about PDF files? How do your employees use their computers?

“Back in the day” (truthfully, not that far back … think just 25 to 30 years), computer access may have been something that many people in a company didn’t have — depending on the industry, of course. Today, nearly everyone works on a computer for part of their job — heck, we carry computers with us everywhere we go! Computers have become a necessary tool for business.

One thing that always strikes me as funny, however: Although most of us consider computers to be important tools, many still purchase them as though they were a commodity asset or an afterthought. Small operators typically run down to Walmart or over to Best Buy and pick up the cheapest one they can find. Larger companies try to strike a deal on volume. In both cases, though, rarely has anyone considered the tasks the computer will perform and purchased appropriate systems. Is it a lack of knowledge or time?

We R Food Safety! is a typical small company, one in which our people wear a lot of different hats. Yet, we all have bedrock responsibilities around which we try to offer the proper tools. To be efficient and successful, each employee — whether a programmer, consultant, sales representative, office staff, etc. — needs the right computer with appropriate power and software.

Let’s take the programming team for example. When we first started the company, we fell into the trap many new companies fall into and purchased the cheapest computers we could, in order to save money. Our programmers compiled code about three times a day, each time taking 20 minutes, and rendering the low-power processing system unusable during that time. For approximately 60 total minutes each day, they couldn’t do anything else on the computer because it was compiling code.

One day, I had brought in my home computer because my laptop had broken, and we ended up compiling code on that more powerful system. It took less than two minutes to compile, and the computer was strong enough to handle me doing other work at the same time. By purchasing and using the cheaper computing alternative, we lost led to a monthly loss of approximately $800.00 (assuming four weeks in a month at a $40/hour rate). Suffice to say, we went out and bought better systems for approximately $1,200, which paid for themselves in approximately six weeks. Those units lasted approximately three years before being replaced by even better systems — over the three-year lifespan of primary use, each unit saved approximately $30,000 in lost productivity. But this is an extreme example.

Here’s another example of how idle time adds up. Our office team processes a lot of spreadsheets. Some of these spreadsheets are quite large: Opening, saving, and closing them takes a fair amount of computer processor resources. I was curious, so I did a very unscientific study comparing an Intel Core i3 unit to an Intel Core i7 unit — neither one considered by me to be top-of-the-line computers. The i3 cost approximately $399, and the i7 approximately $899.

The i7 can open my business projections spreadsheet in less than two seconds; the i3 took eight seconds. That six-second difference piled up over a day’s worth of opening similar spreadsheets balloons to approximately four minutes a day of lost time for spreadsheets alone. Again, while not scientific by any means, I then tried to extrapolate how much additional time I would lose over the course of a day using the i3 vs. the i7 on other files, and I figured I’d lose approximately 10 minutes per day. I then attempted to estimate the time lost opening Microsoft Outlook, rendering Web pages, etc., and came up with a rough total of 20 minutes per day waiting on the slower CPU. That further equates to roughly 6.5 hours per month of lost productivity, or about seven months to recoup my investment in the i7. Over a roughly three-year lifespan, the i7 would save $3,770 in lost productivity.

So, which benchmarks should you use to determine the right computer for the right job? We have found that the i3 is a great single-task unit, used strictly as a testing unit for a probe solution we have developed. i5 units are decent for run-of-the-mill tasks like basic reception work or research online. For any heavier workload beyond those tasks, we use the basic i7. Note, we are performing tasks on some AMD units, but the office jury is still out on them. Although thin clients and remote desktops are great for controlling security, they are costing you in productivity.

The key to any of this is pinpointing the tasks you want the new computer to perform, and then investing in the best one for the job. You don’t ask your sales team to make calls in a bus or tractor trailer, and by the same token, you don’t ship product in a Corvette.

More apropos, you wouldn’t negatively impact your processing operation by short-changing your investment or using technology ill-equipped to handle the task at hand.

Don’t do it with your back-of-the-house computing systems either.

— Andrew Lorenz, president, We R Food Safety!