The Disposable PC
I come from a long line of engineers and academic types. My Grandfather would complain that no one knew how to fix things anymore. My father used to say the same thing, although ironically, I remember getting an ear-full when I took apart his radio and then could not get it back together.
So it was interesting to hear my father relate a story about making a return to Best Buy. He had recently purchased a food processor of some kind, one of those new, do everything juicers that slices and dices. Anyway, he brought his recent purchase to the customer service counter, after carefully repacking it in its original box with all the proper packaging, manuals, and extra parts included. Once he explained his situation to the helpful Best Buy associate, that person dropped the returned item, without even opening the box, into a large bin behind the counter. To my father’s surprise, that large bin of neatly packaged return items was in fact the trash bin, soon to be delivered directly to the nearest land fill or recycling plant.
The reason these items are not repaired anymore is the prohibitive cost for logistics and labor. It is much cheaper for the retailer and the manufacturer to dispose of the old device and simply give a new one to the customer. When you add together all the labor and logistics associated with documenting the source of the problem, shipping to the appropriate service center (probably in another country with lower cost labor), having a tech fix the problem, then repackaging and sending it (overseas again) back to the customer, you can quickly see the logic in this decision. Those logistical and labor costs, together with the fact that the device in question retails for a few hundred dollars, support the decision to dispose of the broken item. Even the engineer or rabid environmentalist would agree it is a pragmatic choice.
I remembered this again recently when I was struggling with a laptop PC that was giving me trouble. After spending 3 hours trouble-shooting, updating virus definitions, and running anti-malware tools, my PC still needed several hours of attention before it was good to go. But just like the toaster or the blender, our PCs are getting cheaper and cheaper. Just the other day I saw a powerful PC with all the bells and whistles for sale for under $500. There is a good possibility that an even more powerful PC will cost half the cost in 5 years. But tech support costs are not declining, and the need for them seems to be increasing. There is more software, more problems, the operating systems get more complicated, and the support of peripheral devices seems no simpler today than it did 10 years ago. And the forward thinking IT professionals I meet with are focused on what these new software / services can do for their clients, instead of how to continually fix and support their hardware.
So how do we justify hours of support and setup costs that could easily total $1000 on a device that costs half that? The answer is we can't. Our personal computing environment includes our data files, software, hardware settings, and configuration settings. All the rest is in the noise and only a head-ache.
In my business, we tell MSPs (Managed Service Providers) and VARs (Value Added Resellers) they are not providing value to their new Microsoft Exchange customer if they set them up with servers in-house. Instead, the value is added by having the MSP convince the customer to use a hosted Exchange solution. The same logic must be applied to all this ridiculous tech support going on inside my company and yours. If a tech person is working on a PC or laptop more than 15 minutes in order to get basic functionality and service restored, they are wasting time and money. How much f'ing time is spent with computers that have virus problems or malware? My friends in the security industry tell me it will only get worse.
Just like the toaster or blender, the PC will soon be disposable. And isn’t it time? How much effort and costs go into bringing a PC back to a usable state? The reason we don’t reformat our hard drives when there is a problem is that it creates a day’s worth of work…unacceptable in today’s world. If everything we cared about on that PC was mobilized, a reset or “last steady state” option would be much more attractive. The IT world will not be changed by increased security; it will be changed by mobility… the power of choice.
The power of choice and the power of mobility is freedom. If a local environment is no longer working, and the local battle may not be winnable, we all need the freedom and mobility to move to another environment.
Hey, where have I heard that before? Was it Thomas Jefferson?
© Joel E. Allen 2009. All Rights Reserved
So it was interesting to hear my father relate a story about making a return to Best Buy. He had recently purchased a food processor of some kind, one of those new, do everything juicers that slices and dices. Anyway, he brought his recent purchase to the customer service counter, after carefully repacking it in its original box with all the proper packaging, manuals, and extra parts included. Once he explained his situation to the helpful Best Buy associate, that person dropped the returned item, without even opening the box, into a large bin behind the counter. To my father’s surprise, that large bin of neatly packaged return items was in fact the trash bin, soon to be delivered directly to the nearest land fill or recycling plant.
The reason these items are not repaired anymore is the prohibitive cost for logistics and labor. It is much cheaper for the retailer and the manufacturer to dispose of the old device and simply give a new one to the customer. When you add together all the labor and logistics associated with documenting the source of the problem, shipping to the appropriate service center (probably in another country with lower cost labor), having a tech fix the problem, then repackaging and sending it (overseas again) back to the customer, you can quickly see the logic in this decision. Those logistical and labor costs, together with the fact that the device in question retails for a few hundred dollars, support the decision to dispose of the broken item. Even the engineer or rabid environmentalist would agree it is a pragmatic choice.
I remembered this again recently when I was struggling with a laptop PC that was giving me trouble. After spending 3 hours trouble-shooting, updating virus definitions, and running anti-malware tools, my PC still needed several hours of attention before it was good to go. But just like the toaster or the blender, our PCs are getting cheaper and cheaper. Just the other day I saw a powerful PC with all the bells and whistles for sale for under $500. There is a good possibility that an even more powerful PC will cost half the cost in 5 years. But tech support costs are not declining, and the need for them seems to be increasing. There is more software, more problems, the operating systems get more complicated, and the support of peripheral devices seems no simpler today than it did 10 years ago. And the forward thinking IT professionals I meet with are focused on what these new software / services can do for their clients, instead of how to continually fix and support their hardware.
So how do we justify hours of support and setup costs that could easily total $1000 on a device that costs half that? The answer is we can't. Our personal computing environment includes our data files, software, hardware settings, and configuration settings. All the rest is in the noise and only a head-ache.
In my business, we tell MSPs (Managed Service Providers) and VARs (Value Added Resellers) they are not providing value to their new Microsoft Exchange customer if they set them up with servers in-house. Instead, the value is added by having the MSP convince the customer to use a hosted Exchange solution. The same logic must be applied to all this ridiculous tech support going on inside my company and yours. If a tech person is working on a PC or laptop more than 15 minutes in order to get basic functionality and service restored, they are wasting time and money. How much f'ing time is spent with computers that have virus problems or malware? My friends in the security industry tell me it will only get worse.
Just like the toaster or blender, the PC will soon be disposable. And isn’t it time? How much effort and costs go into bringing a PC back to a usable state? The reason we don’t reformat our hard drives when there is a problem is that it creates a day’s worth of work…unacceptable in today’s world. If everything we cared about on that PC was mobilized, a reset or “last steady state” option would be much more attractive. The IT world will not be changed by increased security; it will be changed by mobility… the power of choice.
The power of choice and the power of mobility is freedom. If a local environment is no longer working, and the local battle may not be winnable, we all need the freedom and mobility to move to another environment.
Hey, where have I heard that before? Was it Thomas Jefferson?
© Joel E. Allen 2009. All Rights Reserved
posted by Joel Allen at 5:06 PM
