Exam in hardware.

[Trazen]

Hey as the title says Im going to have about hardware in my exams.

Today we got a list of what they expect us to cover.

Office - 3D Simulation computer comparison, price, specs etc.
Economy
BIOS
Leasing / Desktop / Macs / Laptops / Tablets / Docking station / Smart phones. What to choose depending on what kind of work you do.

So what we have to do is cover the list above, and I come here asking what do you think? Have you ever worked in an office? If so what specs would you recommend for a low budget pc that can run the office pack and various other standard office programs?

What do you think we should present about the BIOS?

I guess you're seeing where this is going. All I ask is for your opinions All help is appreciated.

Trazen

[vesseblah]

In office 95% of people (even CEO's) need shitty cheap computer that can run web browser, as most software is in the cloud now. The other 5% needs really high end workstations that can easily double or triple the budget of gaming computers.

BIOS is just there to start the computer from the first block of the first HDD, and it's mostly legacy shit anyway. UEFI is more modern version of it and blahblah...


So you want us to do your homework? I guess you're seeing where this is going?

[Trazen]

Jesus all I'm doing is asking for opinions from others who have more experience then me in this....excuse me for wanting to make a good "product" for my exam...

[Djinni]

I'd probably say more like 98% of people in the office need a basic word processing machine. Most students laptops have better hardware in them than the typical office workstation.
You will probably also find that even if you gave them each a current "gaming" rig with 4GHz+ quad core CPU's and multi-GPU's they'd still find ways to slow it down. Office users rarely look after their computers that's what tech's are for.

For your exam I would choose which ever topic gets you the most marks, it doesn't matter what you write about as long as you have the piece of paper to say "I got X mark in this exam." If in doubt, pick your strongest subjects. If you don't know much about leasing, mac's or tablets... probably best not to choose them as your main subjects. (assuming this is an exam question rather than a "what course do I take?" decision.

As for Vesseblah's comment about the cloud... sure in modern office scenarios... but the majority of office situations are decades behind. Often you will find them with 1 or 2 machines running Windows 7, maybe 5 or 6 on Windows Vista and the majority will still be running Windows XP. (assuming 20-30 workstations) Very often using well-outdated software. Namely for 2 reasons:
1) They are used to it. No point changing it if it still does what you want it to do, no matter how many new loopholes you have to jump through to make it work.
2) Upgrading costs money. No point changing it if it still does what you want it to do.

I last did some work for the NHS, and the staff there actually thought that printing off a form, filling it in, scanning it back in to save it to the system and then (often printing it off again because at this point whoever started the process was doing something else) FAXing it to another department, where that department or person then had to scan it in all over again. Was the most efficient way to duplicate data. And they would do this hundreds of times a day, for each patient, for each prescription etc...

Many times in an office people will just be relived to have a system that works. Regardless of how messed up it may seem to you or me.

[llDemonll]

$1,100 seems to be the "sweet spot" for me right now...All the office computers I purchase are about that price. You can get cheaper, but that gives them a life expectancy of ~3 years and the extra $100 a year you'd save by buying cheaper doesn't pay off in the long run

Biggest problem with the could is that Microsoft's applications (namely Excel) can't run VBA