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Old 09-24-2007, 02:39 AM
wouter wouter is offline
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If talking about corporate laptops, I think you should pay a lot of attention to a few things that you may care less about for a personal laptop.

one of them is durability. Whenever a laptop breaks down this causes the need for a replacement for the user, who is affected because he is missing those few little applications, or this handy little tool he always uses. Often you will see that the user loses a day of productivity. Murphy's law dictates that the laptop that breaks is for that critical person for that one project. So losing the time for him means that the project is delayed by a day. Price over quality is normally not really an argument, because the laptops are close in terms of price range.

Another thing that I care about is the ease of installing drivers and software. How compatible are the machines and how easy is it to maintain a set of drivers for all laptops you are using in the corporate installation image? If you have good hardware standardization, you can maintain installs easier. If the drivers are made available through an easy to use system that makes your update management easier. Saving you time and time is money.

Then there is the point of service. What happens when a laptop breaks, how quick does the service employee respond, do they have things such as temporary replacements so you do not have to keep a surplus in stock? How well do they deliver on their SLA's?

Other things that are commonly important are weight, battery life, standard warranty (although what you really need to know is what the 3 year full warranty plan costs), delivery time for new orders, perception of the brand (otherwise you get complaining managers that heard we are using the "wrong" brand), serviceability (there should be a service manual with all serviceable parts available through PDF from the vendor's site), and availability of spare parts.

Price is not important I think, as the true cost of a laptop in a corporate environment is not determined by the initial cost of the laptop, but by the cost for using it over a period of three years. (Always replace hardware after three years, whether the user likes it or not )



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