With chain stores such as JB, Harvey Norman etc, the dead giveaway is that the computers they choose to sell are NOT the computers they use themselves in their own corporate network.
Have a look in their office or under their checkouts, there they have corporate or business grade equipment as they are more cost effective.
Whilst these home computers look good and are cheap their cost effectiveness of such equipment is not good.
Aside from their poorer performance, security and other risks, their effective life is usually 1-2 years instead of 3-4 years with corporate grade equipment.
Studies by Gartner and other independent business research groups show that any initial cost savings quickly become Extra costs well beyond the initial few hundred dollars saved, not to mention any inefficiencies and staff frustrations of using a less than optimal computer.
The additional total costs of ownership over the life of the devices include:
- Home or consumer grade equipment is not designed for business or office and travel use
- Do not come with Windows365 or Windows Pro business operating systems
- Do not have the security and systems management compatibility with the industry standards and IT management and security systems we provide and use to secure and efficiently manage your IT systems.
- The low cost of these laptops is subsidised by bloatware, pop ups and advertising from 3rd party software vendors (so there would be additional cost to remove these)
- They also have limited docking station options if you were to want to use it as a desktop replacement or say with dual monitors in a workplace
- Their components are sourced from many different factories and can be different between what looks like the same models, and they can change from Month to month, one of the ways organisations keep efficiencies, reduce problems and improve the staff experience using their equipment is to have a SOE (Standard operating environment) and standardisations of your fleet, that is lost with consumer grade.
- Simple usability issues such as the being able to share or use a Charger from a colleague’s laptop when yours is in the other office because there is no standardization
- Only has 1 year warranty (and the extended warranties are not usually through the manufacture but by 3rd party warranty vendors with long response times and restrictions, see what Consumer organisations such as choice have to say about them)
- Consumer grade equipment is NOT supported or covered under your IT maintenance service from Ategra, so any work with these devices is out of scope of your included services and at the out-of-scope discounted rate