[SOLVED] Upgrading office computers - SSD vs HDD

May 13, 2019
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Hello all,
Recently my IT team has been assigned with the task of providing a list of upgrades needed for all employee-PCs at my firm (about 20 employees). The PCs are mostly old standard Dell machines with the following specs:
  • i5 34xx
  • 4GB RAM DDR3
  • 1TB 7200RPM HDD
In my case, since I only use MS Office/PDF readers/Chrome, my IT recommended only a RAM upgrade. I suggested also an upgrade in my storage drive, from the HDD to a SSD. The IT team says it wouldn't be worth the money, since most of the files that I (and most of my firm) access are saved on the firm's servers and not in our local machines. Does this make sense?
For me it's very clear that the SSD is not going to have the same performance as if the files were all saved locally in our machines, but I'm very skeptical about their argument that this upgrade is not going to help our PCs' performance at all. I can imagine this idea being totally worth the money only because of the faster boot speed or faster Windows/MS Office navigation (and I'm not even considering that SSDs are way cheaper today). Is my intuition right in this matter?
Thanks and cheers.
 
Solution
What if we could do both? Would it be worth the money?
RAM first, then SSD.
4GB is right on the edge of "Not Enough" for any recent Windows version in an office environment.

And any "IT Dept" that has a clue can clone from the old HDD to the new SSD. About an hour total for each system.

Barty1884

Retired Moderator
The systems will be 'snappier' overall, definitely.

But, as a business decision, is it going to result in a substantial upturn in productivity..... probably not. If the employees predominantly use Office/Chrome etc, once they're open, most of the speed benefit is gone (mostly).
I can see the rationale that $X cost + Y amount of time to reinstall the OS, programs etc - even from an image, is not going to result in a widespread upturn in productivity.
If employees are used to turning on their system & then heading to get a coffee, that behaviour isn't going to change. While the system might be ready in <30 seconds vs 5 minutes, if it takes 5 minutes to go get a coffee.... it's mostly moot.

For one system, sure, there's no harm. But for ~20 systems at, say $40 an SSD... any business would want to see a return on that $800 investment.... and I just don't see it personally.
 
D

Deleted member 14196

Guest
It makes total sense to me and yeah you really don’t need it if all you do is work on the server
 
All logical arguments aside, there is a post somewhere here that explains precisely why IT personnel is often called PRIESTS. Funny but true. Meaning what IT says, go, there is nothing you can do, unless your department have your own IT budget and even then if central IT say they can't support "non-standard" configurations, again, you S.O.L. Plus big boss between spend money, no spend money, guess which way he will go.
 
May 13, 2019
4
0
10
The systems will be 'snappier' overall, definitely.

But, as a business decision, is it going to result in a substantial upturn in productivity..... probably not. If the employees predominantly use Office/Chrome etc, once they're open, most of the speed benefit is gone (mostly).
I can see the rationale that $X cost + Y amount of time to reinstall the OS, programs etc - even from an image, is not going to result in a widespread upturn in productivity.
If employees are used to turning on their system & then heading to get a coffee, that behaviour isn't going to change. While the system might be ready in <30 seconds vs 5 minutes, if it takes 5 minutes to go get a coffee.... it's mostly moot.

For one system, sure, there's no harm. But for ~20 systems at, say $40 an SSD... any business would want to see a return on that $800 investment.... and I just don't see it personally.

Well I think it's worth mentioning that our PCs are currently very sketchy, with high boot up times, lots of crashes in MS Office Software and low response time in the Windows environment in general. I really can't see the RAM upgrade solving these issues, although it could make things a little smoother. I can say that management probably just wants a good reason to buy the SSDs, since they're going to get their PCs enhanced as well.
 
May 13, 2019
4
0
10
All logical arguments aside, there is a post somewhere here that explains precisely why IT personnel is often called PRIESTS. Funny but true. Meaning what IT says, go, there is nothing you can do, unless your department have your own IT budget and even then if central IT say they can't support "non-standard" configurations, again, you S.O.L. Plus big boss between spend money, no spend money, guess which way he will go.
I think the hardest thing to do is convincing them to reinstall OS in 20+ machines. Haha
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Well I think it's worth mentioning that our PCs are currently very sketchy, with high boot up times, lots of crashes in MS Office Software and low response time in the Windows environment in general. I really can't see the RAM upgrade solving these issues, although it could make things a little smoother. I can say that management probably just wants a good reason to buy the SSDs, since they're going to get their PCs enhanced as well.
From a strictly hardware standpoint, going from 4GB to 8GB RAM is far more likely to 'fix' those issues vs an SSD.