Costs and Benefits

Bryant & Stratton College

Today we will talk about the cost and benefits for getting new laptop’s for Election management bodies (EMBs). This packet will include the initial costs of purchasing new hardware and software, the hiring of consultants to set up the new system. Also the costs for maintenance and management costs to keep the laptop’s running. This will show you why we need new laptops. The process of getting new laptops is for the new technology that would replace the old ones we have had for 6 years now. The laptops that are used right now are Dell Latitude E6400 notebook pc with an operating system of 32-bit Windows Vista Business. This has a processor that is called Intel Pentium. It has a clock rate of 60 MHz- 200MHz. We will be upgrading to a VAIO FIT laptop from Sony that comes with the new 3rd generation Intel Core i5 dual processer and has a 64-bit Windows 8 business. The Dell Latitude E6400 that is used now has a lot of problems. One of them is the time it takes to open a program and find the right info you need. It takes all most 2 minutes just to pull up all accounts for one customer. They are starting to freeze when more than 2 apps are open. This is a major problem because 80% of the time we need to have a lot more open to help the customer’s. If you continue to use these old computers you may lose data because they are all 90% full. The Dell Latitude E6400 has now wireless network. Now the VAIO FIT is a newer laptop that costs $549.00 and the ASUS X44L cost us $399.00. The new VAIO FIT comes with more space than what we have now. The VAIO FIT comes with 8GB and the Dell Latitude E6400 only has 2GB. The VAIO FIT has will help by speeding up time it take for a program to open because of the new processor speed of 1.80Ghz with Intel turbo boost technology up to 2.70GHz. It also a good battery life that goes up to 5 hours with a solid state drive that has 2GB dedicated to it. The VAIO FIT comes with HHD (Hybrid Hard Drive) this is one the magnetic-hard disk drives today and the flash memory is great. This gives you faster access to your data, also with a faster boot up time compared to standard hard drive. The VAIO FIT also comes with rapid wake this helps when the computer is left on. When it goes to sleep you will be able to resume in two seconds with data safe and secure. There is an extraordinary web camera that is built-in this comes with Exmor R@ CMOS Sensor technology. The benefits of applying this new laptop to EMBs are better customer service because they will not have to wait long to get the info they will need to help them. With bigger memory you will be able to save more info on the customer. One of the main benefits is the wireless network that comes with new VAIO FIT. This helps because if you have to travel outside of the work space and still needs computer to wrap up a sale. This saves time for both you in the customer. Some of the possible problems that may come with this will be the training of the employees from Windows Vista to Windows 8. They will also need to learn how to find all the new files and where they are located in Windows 8. Here are some of the estimate costs that involved in getting this new laptop. The VAIO FIT cost $549.00 and we times that by 10 will cost us $5490.00. The cost for a WRT54GL Wireless-G Router is $49.99 we will need 4 one for each corners of the building. The price for this is $200.00 plus $100 for wire. There will be an ongoing fee for regular maintenance will be $400 a year. If there is a major technology fails there will be a charge of $100 an hour with max amount of $1000.00. Hiring a consultant to train all the workers and to install all computers and a wireless network will cost $3000.00. As of now we have major issues with the system that cost us $500.00 for each time they come out. Within the past 3 years there have been 10