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Three short papers about desktop TCO
Wintel camp beats the same drum
Our weekly ransack of the Reg Whitepaper library yields three Wintel papers all promoting best desktop PC practice. First up is Intel and vPro, which has been a bit of a marketing flop and, in its first iteration, a tad lacking on the management front. Intel wants us all to look again at vPro for reduced total cost of ownership (TCO) and all round environmental goodness. And then to Microsoft for its seven-phase model of the enterprise lifecycle.
Revisiting Intel vPro for corporate purchases
Organisations can reduce desktop running and management costs substantially simply by switching on and using the Active Management Technology (AMT) features that are built in to Intel vPro PCs. But take-up has been lousy. According to this Gartner research note, since vPro technology's initial release, Intel has addressed many of the issues that had limited its appeal to corporate buyers. A second Intel paper on the same subject - The Next Generation Personal Compute model - parades vPro’s TCO charms.
More than anyone, Microsoft is committed to making the desktop PC model work as efficiently as possible – as it means that organisations are less likely to explore technology models that cut it out of the loop.
According to Microsoft, examining the entire PC lifecycle enables corporate to view costs systemically. Microsoft identifies seven phases across the PC lifecycle: planning, purchasing, deployment, operation, support, upgrade, and retirement. Even rough estimates can help companies gauge how spending or saving money on RAM today affects upgrade costs, application capability, PC retirement, and residual value. ®
Biting the hand that feeds IT
