As we hit the end of the year, you may be considering buying new computer hardware for the office.
Sometimes companies like to buy things from big chain retailers because it is the quickest option and in some cases cheaper than buying a unit online. What most people don’t realize is big chain retailers are often selling to the home market or personal consumer market, NOT the business market. And the computer might work in a business environment, but eventually the system starts slowing down, a hard drive crashes or it catches a virus of some type and the computer has to be “reloaded” back to the “factory” settings just like it was when you purchased it. We recently had to reload a laptop for a client to factory settings due to employee turnover. We used the original factory DVDs to install the operating system, drivers and programs from the factory.
We then had to spend time removing the following trial programs and game programs that were included on the factory image:
Juno Preloader, NetZero Preloader, Office Home & Student Trial, Norton Internet Security Trial, SPORE Creature Creator Trial Edition, Agatha Christie – Death on the Nile, Bejewled 2 Deluxe, Big City Adventures – San Francisco, Blackhawk Striker 2, Blasterball 3, Build-a-lot 2, Chuzzle Deluxe, Diner Dash – Hometown Hero, Dream Chronicles 2, FATE, Family Feud 3, Jewel Quest Solitaire 2, JoJo’s Fashion Show, Luxor 3, Mystery P.I. – The Vegas Heist, Peggle, Penguins!, Poker Superstars III, Polar Bowler, Polar Golfer, Polar Pool, Slingo Deluxe, The Hidden Object Game Show, The Price Is Right, Tradewinds Legends, Virtual Villagers – A New Home, Virtual Villagers – The Secret City, Wedding Dash, Wheel of Fortune 2, Zuma Deluxe.
Of course once a program is loaded it always seems to leave traces of itself on the hard drive and so we had to download additional registry cleaning software to make sure the unit was no longer running little bits of software that had already been uninstalled. This all had to be done before we could get to installing the business software the company actually used. So the $200 saved by purchasing a cheap machine off the shelf was negated by the 4 hours of labor it took to reload and clean off all the junk that came with the machine.
Save your time and money by buying the “professional” and “office” versions of operating systems when the computer is going to used at, or connected to, an office network.
– A friendly reminder from the friendly Network Support department at Delta Systems.