Re. Getting new toys

[Geoff Hart <geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

     Chris Hester asked for tips on how to persuade Management to upgrade
     the publications group's computers. Here are a few ideas that worked
     for me:

     1. Think laterally: I got my state of the art <grin> 386-40 by showing
     how upgrading a colleague's computer would save her time and money.
     When she got the new computer, I inherited her old one. In your case,
     can you justify getting any of your colleagues a P6 (due imminently)
     so you can inherit their Pentium systems?

     2. Demonstrate a cost savings. We got new Pentiums for two group
     members by taking on a job that we formerly contracted out, and thus
     saving enough money to pay for the new computers in a year. What does
     your company contract out? Can you do it? Would you be willing to do
     it?

     3. "Fix" a broken part instead of upgrading the entire computer. I'm
     not advocating pouring a cup of coffee down the back of your PC, but
     sometimes it's cheaper to upgrade an entire PC and use the old one for
     parts than it is to fix something that's broken. (Of course, if a cup
     of coffee did happen to fall down the back of your PC due to seismic
     instabilities, or if you happened to be working overtime during a
     thunderstorm... <grin>)

     4. Demonstrate a productivity gain. Do you do overtime because you're
     waiting for your PC to compile an index, format a page, generate color
     separations etc.? If so, figure out how many hours this takes. Walk
     down the hall and borrow a programmer's Pentium over lunch, and time
     the same task. Add up the numbers and see how many hours of overtime
     you'd save, then convert this into salary dollars. Does this buy a new
     computer? I got an upgrade once by launching an application while my
     boss was in the room asking for some data stored in a file created by
     that application; when he experienced how long it took to open the
     file, he immediately approved my upgrade. (Of course, if you're not
     suffering now, and everything runs adequately fast, why not wait a
     little? See point 1 above: get P6's for your programmers!)

     5. Propose a pilot project. I got my first Mac by bringing one in on
     lease to demonstrate how it could do exactly the same job as a $10K
     UNIX workstation; this moved us from Interleaf on a Sun to PageMaker
     on a Mac, with no perceptible change in productivity. We ditched the
     Sun and got everyone Macs. (Oh yeah... you can also do this as a
     "lease to own", and hope that nobody notices until you've spent so
     much on leasing that it would be embarrassing to send it back to the
     lessor. But that would be unethical... <grin> Yes, for the curious, I
     did do this once. I saved my employer much more money in one year than
     I wasted in leasing, with better savings in subsequent years, all of
     this money that couldn't have been saved otherwise, so it worked out
     pretty well for both of us in the end.)

     6. Wait for Windows 96. Rumor hath it that this beast won't run on
     anything less than a Pentium anyway, so you'll have to upgrade! <grin
     again, for the irony-impaired>

     --Geoff Hart    @8^{)}
     geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca

     Disclaimer: If I didn't commit it in print in one of
     our reports, it don't represent FERIC's opinion.