Your computer is 5 years old.. The warranty is expired. You’re sitting on the fence wondering if you should replace it. It’s still working, but Windows 7 is now out and Windows 8 is just around the corner. Heck, you could buy a fancy Ultrabook like the Asus Zen prime, the rage of the Anti-Mac movement, but maybe you should reallocate those funds to something more pressing like that trip to French Guyana where your old laptop could retire in style?
Just a sec. You can surprise that significant other with a trip of his or her lifetime for their upcoming birthday. But before you go, that laptop replacement should be of utmost priority for you and here’s why. When you buy a hot XPS laptop from a Tier 1 manufacturer like Dell or even an Asus Zen Prime with a Memory Express IPR (In-Store Product Replacement) and get a next day onsite or replacement warranty for 3 years, all is well. You might even extend that warranty to 5 years. Motherboard goes? Another one is delivered the next day. Hard drive toasts? No biggee. Get another one and restore your data from your backups and you’re back in business. But if you don’t have a current next business day warranty?
You have little choice. If a motherboard goes and you can’t get one shipped to you next day, you are now having to go to Best Buy, Future Shop or Staples or one of the many indies here in town for a white box computer. You have to do this in the middle of the day, right smack dab between getting that offer in your email for a juicy offer to sell your business to the Virgin group of companies (you were that person who paid $2500 for 3 minutes of Sir Richard Branson’s time at the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce’s luncheon last Friday, right?) and wanting to send a reply saying “absolutely” which you couldn’t send because, “Hey, I don’t have a working computer.” Of course, “Who only has one computer these days?”, but you get my point.
Planning your computer’s retirement means that rather than leaving the timing of it’s demise to the whimsical nature of the computer itself, you proactively take it out of the picture BEFORE it goes critical on you. Kind of callous, I know, but we really have to look at these things logically, rather than emotionally. These are just machines, people and they will fail on you when you LEAST want them to go kaput.
You will avoid 3 very ugly events, if you plan your computer’s retirement. Number 1 – An emergency intervention bill. When your computer quits, it will be just before you save that final revision of your Quickbooks after having stayed up the last 3 nights, way into the wee hours of the morning, cleaning up little inconsistencies so that your Chartered Accountant would have a breeze going thru them for year end. You panic. You need emergency restorative service. Asap. If you cannot get a machine within a reasonable period of time, Seerx has spare equipment waiting in the wings for you. But you are now officially down. Number 2 – you will lose money. Why? Because you will be down, for x number of hours in the middle of a business day. Loss of productivity and ultimately, profitability. And a lot of yelling from your significant other as to “Who ordered tickets to French Guyana?” Number 3 – you will undergo undue stress and headaches, as first you fly into a rage screaming at that laptop, desktop or heaven forbid, server, spouting arcane words and phrases in hopes that it will scare that box back into service and then finally realize that it does not respond to those type of tirades as well as your children might, given a similar lack of inclination to work. Not to mention the added stress of having forgotten to have those plane tickets mailed to your business address, but heck, that cat’s out of the bag, isn’t it? Number 4 – if you were using Seerx spare equipment, guess what? You need to pay us to do it ALL OVER AGAIN, when your new equipment arrives. Ouch. Number 5 – imagine if this was a server and it died and 10 people were twiddling their thumbs until it was replaced? Ouch x 10.
Call Seerx. We’ve been helping our clients proactively remove those silly machines before they become uppity and leave on their own accord, for 13 years. You get to plan its retirement. On a weekend or after hours when its least stressful and expensive for you. So that you can take that old laptop on a bucket list journey to your favorite beach in the Caribbean, or to Scotland to meet your long lost, but not forgotten kilt-bearing relatives or even on an epic train journey from Cape Town to Cairo. And retire it abroad and in style.