Hardware acquisition and Equipment lifetime

From MissionTechWiki

Hardware acquisition policy covers where you buy your equipment from, and how much you buy at any one time.

Equipment lifetime covers your policy on replacement of equipment, such as Desktop PCs, Laptops and Servers.

Hardware acqusition

• Do you go for low price, or proven reliability?

• Do you buy from the best supplier at the time, or do you go back to the same supplier?

• When replacing PCs, do you buy them little and often, or less often but more each time? The advantage of buying several at a time is that you can install identical software on them by using a disk imaging program (covered under Network and Workstation Management). You can also overwrite corrupted disks with a clean image.

Equipment lifetime

How often do you replace your PCs and other equipment? Do you have a fixed interval, say every four years, and budget each year to replace PCs older than that, or do you wait until they fail? Although the former is more expensive, it also means less support time is spent on failing hardware. If support staff and time is more scarce than money this may be a good option.

Original page: http://www.missiontech.info/wiki/Hardware_acquisition_and_Equipment_lifetime
from the MissionTech Wiki created by the International Conference on Computers and Missions