A room full of 5 - 10 yrs old computers. Are they worth the hassle?

PremierCisco

Hello Folks,

I have a delimma, in that where i am volunteering they have a computer room of around 26 computers. A mix between desktop and tower. I'd say they range in age between 5 to 10 yrs.

IBM Vista series desktops Fujistu Siemens towers etc....

They all run Windows XP Pro, Office 2007 Enterprise and other programs.

Now they all meet the minimum reqs for running XP Pro and Office 2007 Enterprise.

The problem is they are as slow to startup and slow/hang while running office 2007.
Now i have already done the usually mantainence, disk cleanup run virus scans disk defrag, check disk etc.

Ive being looking at them for the last week or so. Are they even worth trying to fix or would you wipe them and only put on office 2007 only and see if that makes any difference?.

My take on this is that office 2007 would require decent setup in relation to hardware at least hardware thats no more than 3 yrs old not 5 or 10 yrs.

Thanks folks for your take on this and if you were in my situation what would you recommend?.

Regards

Eamonn

earweed

Are they even worth trying to fix or would you wipe them and only put on office 2007 only and see if that makes any difference?.

Don't you need an OS before you can even run office? Or do you mean have nothing on them but XP and Office as that may improve them.
My PC is over 5 years old and runs Office 2007 and Vista Ultimate just fine, I don't have a whole lot of other things on it though.

PremierCisco

Hi earweed,

Thanks for the reply, i was taken the OS as a given, i should have stated that.

sorry about the confusion.

Regards

Eamonn

earweed

I get confused easy sometimes..lol
They should be ok with less other stuff on them. My old computer is kind of slow booting too but that's just because I have a few other things on it all the time. My computer barely passes spec for having office 2007 on it and it never hangs or anything.

ssampier

I'd do a brand new image on them all (with new settings limiting how much junk people can download/install).

I would also weed out the really old boxes that don't have at least a dvd reader or CD burner and 1 GB RAM. I assume you only have a few of those and can be donated or scrapped. Of course then you'll have a fight who gets the new boxes (if it's a tie, I nominate the IT guy/girl).

gateway

ssampier wrote: »

I'd do a brand new image on them all (with new settings limiting how much junk people can download/install).

I would also weed out the really old boxes that don't have at least a dvd reader or CD burner and 1 GB RAM. I assume you only have a few of those and can be donated or scrapped. Of course then you'll have a fight who gets the new boxes (if it's a tie, I nominate the IT guy/girl).

+1
Get them reimaged and make sure they all have 1gb ram. They should just about do the job if thats all they are being used for.

Zartanasaurus

5 year old computers = absolutely. Anything P4 or more recent + 2GB RAM + new hard drive will work great for light office work.

NinjaBoy

Depending on what else you have & the spec's of the machines, have you thought about going down the terminal services route and using them as thin clients?

-Ken

MentholMoose

Zartanasaurus wrote: »

5 year old computers = absolutely. Anything P4 or more recent + 2GB RAM + new hard drive will work great for light office work.

I've been in situations like the OP, and it's almost always been better to replace ancient PCs instead of trying to slightly extend their life. If the PCs can even take 2GB of RAM, which by no means is guaranteed, buying new DDR RAM and a HDD is at least $150, and that's if his employer can buy from a competitive vendor like Newegg. So the OP is faced with potentially spending $4000 or more to upgrade these 26 obsolete PCs. After spending hours just installing new parts, the PCs are still not going to be fast, and getting the OS and software on them all is going to take many, many hours. I can easily imagine him dropping 80 hours of labor on these machines. Even after upgrading, they are still very old and likely to fail at any time. Chances are he will have no budget to upgrade them anyway, so the point is moot.

PremierCisco

Hi Folks,

Thank you all for the replies and ideas.

Unfortunately upgrading these machines would not be an option as i feel and i'd even go an say my employer would not waste money on these machines. They are not worth the money.

I'd say ill just reimage them and just install Office 07 and see how they fair out.

Regards

Eamonn

subl1m1nal

I was in this situation recently, but only about 10 computers. I really wasn't planning on using them in our production environment.

I thought about what to do with them. My plan was a snort box on the network. The computers just sucked too much.

I didn't want to spend any money on them. What I eventually did was yank the hard drive out of them (for security reasons), donated them to Goodwill, and took the tax write-off for myself.

Maybe a local community college would get use out of them for A+ class.

Alternatively, you could see if you can put an OEM copy of windows on it and sell them on craigslist or ebay. Just make sure your corporate licensing is off the machines. You don't want Microsoft examiners in your place of employment (or volunteering).

Bokeh

We had the same issue with some older laptops. Wiped them clean, fresh install of XP Pro then replaced Office with Open Office instead. They work great now.

it_consultant

In a word - no.

- XP is in extended support, so kiss that goodbye soon (thank god).
- 5 year old hardware breaks often, do you really want to deal with that?

N2IT

United Recycle

ssampier

XP SP3 is supported until April 8, 2014, so you still have awhile

earweed

True about that. But they are putting a stop to new PCs with XP soon. Also IE 9, when it comes out (already out in Beta), doesn't support XP so there will be issues.

it_consultant

ssampier wrote: »

XP SP3 is supported until April 8, 2014, so you still have awhile

Thats extended support, which means only security and maintenance updates. Like another poster had eluded too, none of the good new stuff, like IE9.

ssampier

People still use IE?

Okay that's not fair. I know many corporate intranets code for IE (some forcing IE 6 only - I shudder at that notion). Of course some people still drive Ford Pintos, call with brick cell phones, and use dialup modems.

I will say Microsoft has gotten a lot better with their own Microsoft.com pages. I can use their site with Chrome or Iceweasel on Debian and everything looks and downloads just fine.

Paul Boz

Do an inventory of the hardware and specs. Just use Belarc or dxdiag to do this. Make an XP SP3 image with Office 2007 and whatever other apps you need slipstreamed in and deploy it to the freshly wiped machines.

krauser

ssampier wrote: »

People still use IE?

Okay that's not fair. I know many corporate intranets code for IE (some forcing IE 6 only - I shudder at that notion). Of course some people still drive Ford Pintos, call with brick cell phones, and use dialup modems.

I will say Microsoft has gotten a lot better with their own Microsoft.com pages. I can use their site with Chrome or Iceweasel on Debian and everything looks and downloads just fine.

IE 6 = What is that?

Debian + Chrome + Openoffice = An excellent combination for recycling those computers

Slowhand

krauser wrote: »

Debian + Chrome + Openoffice = An excellent combination for recycling those computers

This is not a bad idea, either. Putting a user-friendly Linux distro (if such a thing exists ) on those boxes and running a familiar browser like Chrome or Firefox, along with OpenOffice, might be a good solution. Heck, you could even lift the "Bliss" background picture from one of the XP boxes and put that on any Linux machines you'd make to fool people into thinking they're using Windows. (Anything to ease the user-experience.)

Other than that, doing a complete re-image with XP and Office 2007 is a great idea. One tool you could think about using to help minimize the number of start-up programs and registry gunking is the CCleaner.

Forsaken_GA

I vote for setting up a Beowulf cluster

That or SETI@Home boxen!