Computer-Doc Presents:
Best Practices for
Controlling Computer Support Costs

There are few things more pleasant to an office worker than receiving a brand new PC fresh out of the box. The user usually receives admiring glances from their colleagues acknowledging the apparent speed and stability of the new PC.

Unfortunately, that state of 'speed and stability' does not often last long. Soon after the user has personalized the PC with their favorite wallpaper, screensaver, tools and applications, the boost of speed and stability - and with it improved productivity - quickly evaporates.

Often, the users will simply port over nearly everything from the old to the new. This may include personal software, freeware, shareware and hand-me-downs from their friends. Many of these extras come in via email. Sheep, cats, dancing babies and other creatures roam across our desktop entertaining us at random times of the day.

What's a business to do? The short answer is to impose standards on all computers - and enforce them. The payoff is lower support costs over the life of the computer. It is a well known fact that 2/3rd to 3/4th of the total cost of ownership (TCO) of PCs is support costs. This ratio may widen even more as the cost of hardware continues to plummet.

There are practical steps a business can follow, which I have outlined below, regardless of how small that business may be. If you have 1 to 100 PCs or more, your business can benefit with more stable PCs and therefore lower support costs. All your problems will not disappear overnight, but there will be far fewer of them.

Beware! Many of the points I list below may seem like common sense; almost trivial in nature. But if you do not implement them and continuously enforce them, your workstations' stability will suffer, productivity will go down the toilet and your support costs will start to rise again.

• Standardize Your Workstations as much as possible. Not only should they all have the same applications installed, but also they should be the same versions with the same set of patches. When you update one workstation, update them all.
  [Note: I don't mean to gloss over the test phase of any change. But after an improvement has passed your testing, apply it to all workstations uniformly.]
• Allow Business Software Only.
  All personal software should be banned. Workers should not be using your workstations for personal business anyway. Besides, it uses up precious resources on the PC. Far worse is what it may do to your business software. When a new package is installed, they do not neatly copy files to a single folder. Many files are copied to the WINDOWS folder or the SYSTEM32 subfolder. It also updates WINDOWS' registry, a special file that maintains parameter settings for all the software programs. Files may overwrite existing files with the same name. Conflicts could be created in the registry. At the very least, it enlarges the registry with every additional package.
• A more serious issue has to do with licensing. If a user installs personal software on your PC without a paid license to back it up, the business is liable for software piracy. The business and its owners are subject to criminal, as well as civil, liability.
• Avoid Graphical and Color Rich Personalization - Some business applications require the regular use of multimedia and graphics, which are CPU and memory intensive. So this guideline does not apply to them. That PC has been, most likely, beefed up with additional memory, higher speed processors and high-end graphic subsystems to adequately handle the increased demand. Standard business PCs on the other hand do not do so well. Users love to decorate their workstations with graphic intensive wallpaper and screen savers. They also have grown fond of animated cursors or desktop 'themes' made popular by Microsoft's Plus! product. These may be fine for home PCs, but not in the office. They will rob the PC of a great deal of memory and CPU cycles.
• Turn Off Active Desktop - This is a feature that was bundled into Internet Explorer 4.0 and later and Microsoft considers it part of the operating system. It allows messages, headlines, ticker tapes and other information sources to be 'pushed' down from the Internet to your desktop. Unless there is a clear business application, turn off the feature because it is, once again, very resource intensive.
• Minimize Inactive Applications - Users have become more computer savvy and find it useful to have multiple applications open at one time. They can then quickly flip from one to the other. This is a good practice and I would not want discourage it. However, when working in Microsoft Word, for example, minimize Excel or your browser or all other applications you may have open. A minimized application uses far less resources than one with an open window.
• Ban News Tickers and Internet Radio Stations - Having your workstation receiving these broadcasts over the Internet delivers a double-whammy to your PC. This intensive data stream will rob you of precious bandwidth to the Internet, across your local network AND on your PC.
• Limit the Number and Frequency of Scheduled Tasks - It may be a good practice to schedule disk utilities to check for disk errors and fragmentation, for example. Just don't overdo it. Adjust the scheduler programs to perform these duties no more often than once per week.
• Install Antivirus Software on all PCs - Unfortunately, the computing world is getting to be a very hostile environment these days. Modern day vandals love to produce 1000s of new viruses every day. All PC users have little choice but to buy antivirus software and install it on all of their PCs. Be sure to keep it current by configuring its automatic update features to fetch new virus signatures at least once per week.

Enforcing these business practices is not as difficult as one might think. Microsoft offers a rich array of deployment and policy enforcement tools for Windows 95, 98 and NT Workstation. Talk to your support specialists to learn more about implementing these new standards. By following this basic guideline, a business will be able to reduce the headaches and support costs associated with PCs.

Herb Kolodny
Computer-Doc
herb.kolodny@computerdocs.biz
203-530-7986

Herb Kolodny, founder of Computer-Doc, provides PC, Server and network solutions for his clients. He has nearly 20 years experience delivering computer solutions to large and small businesses. Herb is also a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE). Copyright May, 2002. All rights reserved.