–Win 7 Upgrade Profiteering
Last week I wrote about backup systems and was to complete that article here today. Unfortunately we need to interrupt that series to talk about a more urgent topic – profiteering from the demise of Windows 7 support. Regular readers will already know that Microsoft finally dropped further support for its popular Windows 7 operating system on the 14th of last month. Read on to see some of the ramifications.
Due to the above we are getting around 20 to 30 customers every week coming it to migrate to Windows 10. This can be done by purchasing a new PC device (desktop or laptop) – or in some cases by upgrading their existing device if it has suitable specifications. In our dealings with this project we are finding that around half can simply upgrade the existing device and we often use this opportunity to get them away from a mechanical hard disk drive to a solid-state drive (SSD) at the same time.
So what is going wrong? It seems that not all computer shops are offering this possible upgrade of the existing device. That’s right, we are getting lots of feedback about other computer shops refusing to even look at a Windows 7 device if it is more than 3 years old. Some of these customers are getting told that it would never run Windows 10, so they should forget it and buy a new device. This is wrong and not ethical. The customer should have the choice here after sound advice on both options.
Another one of these customers came to see us this week with a laptop that they had left outside in the car as they expected us to say the same. Instead I asked them to bring it in so that we could check out its specs. It turned out to be a 5th Generation Intel i5-5300U in a HP laptop that still looked like new. It also had 8Gb of ram and a 500GB hard disk drive. Now this CPU has a benchmark rating of 3,853 and will easily run Windows 10.
Keep in mind that our suggested minimum CPU benchmark for Windows 10 is 2,000 and there are many new laptops in stores right now with CPU benchmarks as low as 1,200. These new laptops can still cost as much as $800 and are being sold with Windows 10 and sometimes with just 4GB of ram. At $299 we put a new 250GB SSD into this device and a fresh install of W10 and it ran beautifully. And what had they been quoted at the other shop for a replacement – $1299 !!!
The moral of this story – do not believe everything that a salesperson tells you. Computer performance is simple – 8GB of ram and Windows 10 running on an SSD will perform exactly the same whether the PC is new or 8 years old if they have the same CPU benchmark. In computer terms it becomes 2 + 2 will always equal 4 !
We saved this customer $1,000 and they could not be happier with their choice. They are now going to bring in another laptop that they have at home for us to evaluate. If the CPU benchmarks at 2,000 or more then we will be upgrading it too. This is exactly why we brought out our Eco range of ex-corporate, factory refurbished PC’s and laptops. These devices were built to a specification instead of a budget and leave most of the modern consumer grade rubbish for dead.
Don’t get bullied into throwing out a perfectly good device because a salesperson wants to make extra commission out of you.
Future Byte Me topics can be emailed to [email protected] and Bruce is contactable at Kerr Solutions, 205 Musgrave Street or on 07 49 222 400.
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