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How much time each day do you spend waiting for your system to boot up? Do you often have time to get up and make coffee while you wait for a frozen program to unfreeze? You are probably losing more time than you think. In fact, by some estimates, slow computers account for as much as an entire working week lost every single year for some organizations.
The point is that you can’t underestimate the value of computer speed…
Slow computers cause downtime – seconds, minutes or hours that leave you and your staff unable to do your work. The true cost of downtime (reported by small businesses to be upwards of $8,600 every hour) can be summed up by a simple equation:
Downtime = Lost Revenue + Lowered Productivity + Cost Of Recovery + Ancillary Costs
The main cost of downtime is not the fix itself, it’s the halt in your firm’s productivity. If an IT-related or natural disaster occurs and takes critical systems offline, employees will be unable to complete their tasks, yet your normal business expenses will carry on.
During that time, you incur all the expenses of running a manufacturing firm without the revenue you would usually generate. Even if downtime does not grind everything to a halt, some of your staff will have to divert themselves from their normal work to mitigate the problem – again reducing productivity. Furthermore, while your systems are down, you can’t deliver services to current and potential new clients.
Not all of the costs associated with downtime have a tangible price tag. The trust of your clients and the reputation of your company are invaluable assets that can erode with prolonged or frequent downtime issues. A diminished reputation can negatively affect your future business opportunities.
All of that, because your computers aren’t fast enough to keep up with your manufacturing firm.
Although computer hardware becomes more reliable with each passing year, the demands users make on it are also growing. As your aging system tries to keep up, end-users will begin to notice a slowdown to a crawl. The demands put on your CPU, memory, and storage are usually what slow your computer down.
Issues also commonly occur if you use dated hardware with new programs even when your hardware is well maintained. Pre-2015 hardware can’t keep up with even the latest updates of your existing programs.
Other common causes of computers lag include:
First of all, make sure to invest in high-quality hardware to begin with. Don’t assume a cheap computer – or any hardware, for that matter — will be that much less expensive in the long run. It’s all about considering each and every cost that comes with a given computer – especially the downtime it will cause.
With the right hardware in place, the next step is to make sure you’re preventing downtime proactively – you need to keep an eye out for system issues that can spiral into total stoppages. You need to implement backup technologies and best practices to prevent outages. You need to enhance your cybersecurity to protect against cybercrime.
Regular servicing and tune-ups keep even older computers running well (even if they aren’t lightning fast). These tune-ups include removing old files, unused software, and other clutter. You can also move more applications to the cloud (by using Microsoft Office 365 and other tools), which removes the need for even the software you use every day.
Eventually, however, the hardware no longer serves its purpose and won’t be able to keep up with the demands of late-model programs, including your OS. At this point, you may need to upgrade or replace the PC.
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