It can be tempting to avoid new purchases when dealing with a tight budget or a need to cut costs. When it comes to your office's computer equipment, however, delaying a PC refresh can actually increase your operating expenses. Maintenance and support costs go up significantly over time, and productivity goes down.

Learn about the major costs associated with maintaining and supporting PCs and the six ways in which a PC refresh can benefit your business.

1. Save on repair costs
For most businesses, it's best to replace aging equipment rather than repair it. Maintenance costs on PCs more than three years old can run nearly two and half times higher than on a new PC [1]. From software crashes to hard drive failure, a lot can go wrong as a computer ages.

2. Increase productivity
When your computers work more efficiently, so do you and your employees. Faster processors, such as the Intel® Core 2™ Duo and Intel® vPro™ technology (available on select HP notebook PCs and HP desktop PCs can operate up to six times faster than a three-year old Intel® Pentium® processor. In the case of an Intel® VPro™ PC, users experience 32 percent less system downtime.

With a newer computer, you also can multitask up to three times faster. For example, a new Intel® Centrino® 2 P8600-based notebook can compress a video, convert a document to PDF and perform a virus scan continuously in the background 30 percent faster than a two-year-old Intel® Centrino® 2 T2700-based notebook. Even simple Microsoft Excel calculations are twice as fast.

3. Ensure security
A big part of downtime and subsequent productivity loss is due to security issues. A four-year-old PC will have 53 percent more security incidents than a PC in its first year. Incidents include viruses, service denials and network attacks. Additionally, it costs more to resolve security issues in older PCs, especially when a business has a lot of variability in the hardware it uses. IT staff must deal with:

• Ever increasing exposure to malware
• Complexity related to the build-up of applications over time
• Systems that don't have the memory to support new software upgrades

In fact, fixing security issues in a new PC costs half as much as that in a five-year-old system. New PCs deal with security threats better as well. Most have built-in technology to improve security, such programmable defense filters and tools that automatically isolate an infected PC from the network before it can infect other PCs.

HP notebook PCs come ready-to-protect with HP ProtectTools, an integrated suite of security control modules that protect every aspect of your notebook's security.

4. Reduce energy use
With PCs making up for 40 percent of a company's average utility bill, an upgrade to newer, more energy-efficient PC can seriously impact your bottom line. Improved energy efficiency can also help your company meet local, state and federal energy compliance regulations.
Many HP desktops and laptops are ENERGY STAR® 4.0 qualified. ENERGY STAR 5.0 is also now available on select HP Advanced and HP Elite Business Desktop PCs. This means power supplies are up to 85 percent efficient, and idle wattage times meet certain energy-efficiency standards.

5. Go mobile
If you're wondering how to maximize your investments in upgrades, going mobile is a good place to start. If you are like the more than 50 percent of small businesses and 90 percent of medium-sized businesses that report having employees who travel four to five times a month for business, mobility is no longer a luxury.

6. Improve your image
Finally, new technology can do a lot to grow your business and help you to attract more customers through improved business processes and efficiencies. These enhancements can:

• Streamline your online sales
• Increase communication and contact with your customers
• Make it easier to access and process information

You may also have heard that Microsoft® has released Windows 7™. The new operating system will bring with it many new innovations that will make your work life easier and more secure. Call Gary Jacobson, (800) 353-0931 ext. 220, at the JCI Group today. We can help you determine what technology is right for your business.