Justification for System upgrade

[navecchiarelli]

Hi all,

I have a department of about 12 people running either Pentium 4 (2.8Gz) w/756-1Gb ram or Laptops with Core Solo 1.66Gz w/512gb ram. All systems are XP sp2. We currently run ACAD04, PhotoShop, Acrobat, Office as our bread and butter. We are about to upgrade to ACAD07 but I need to make justification to our IT group that everyone needs to be running with at least 1Gb ram. However, the first thing they do is go to the AutoDesk website and see the system requirements and say we're fine. Any suggestions on how to write a justification for the additional ram that talks around the system requirements in black and white?

Thanks,
Neil V.

[Anonymous]

Get management in the room with IT. Get a laptop, a desktop, and a desktop
with 2 gig of ram installed. Have the machines open a normal sized drawing
at the same time. Make sure the manager knows that the time difference
happens every time a drawing is opened on every machine. Make sure the
manager knows the gig of ram is about $100. Even if the difference in time
is only 30 secs., do the math. 1 drawing/day x 30 secs x 12 users x 5 days
x 50 weeks = 25 hrs/year in lost production in ACAD alone. Using a 1 year
timeframe, $1200 for ram/25 hrs = $48/hr. That's the breakeven point. If
your user are worth more than that to your company, do the upgrade. If not,
no upgrade.

Do not use this exercise to make an enemy of IT. It's a learning process
for all.

Pat


wrote in message news:5544040@discussion.autodesk.com...
Hi all,

I have a department of about 12 people running either Pentium 4 (2.8Gz)
w/756-1Gb ram or Laptops with Core Solo 1.66Gz w/512gb ram. All systems are
XP sp2. We currently run ACAD04, PhotoShop, Acrobat, Office as our bread
and butter. We are about to upgrade to ACAD07 but I need to make
justification to our IT group that everyone needs to be running with at
least 1Gb ram. However, the first thing they do is go to the AutoDesk
website and see the system requirements and say we're fine. Any suggestions
on how to write a justification for the additional ram that talks around the
system requirements in black and white?

Thanks,
Neil V.

[Anonymous]

An eloquent defense of IT.
EVERYBODY comes to us with some request or another.
If everyone got what they wanted, when they wanted it, we would be broke in no time.
Your current system spec's are not adequate to run large projects using the vertical applications that ADesk ships.
If you are designing one story ranches and sprinkler system plans that's one thing.
If you are pushing the stuff that's another.
Hardware is cheap, Software and users time is not.
Your system spec's are essentially 2-3 year old boxes.
Work fine in some environments, not so well in others.

[Anonymous]

John,

Being in IT, how frightened would you be by the OP's statement that his
company's IT group went to the website & are using the min. requirements
posted as a justification for a configuration. You don't want to make any
person or group an enemy, but it would be very difficult for me to keep a
straight face when presented with that arguement.

Neil, at a minimun, go to each website and add up the posted requirements.
I believe that's where you start for a baseline machine. Then you can
balance requirements, tasks and user's abilities. You may not have that
flexibility in a large corporate environment, I don't know, never been
there.

Pat

wrote in message news:5544674@discussion.autodesk.com...
An eloquent defense of IT.
EVERYBODY comes to us with some request or another.
If everyone got what they wanted, when they wanted it, we would be broke in
no time.
Your current system spec's are not adequate to run large projects using the
vertical applications that ADesk ships.
If you are designing one story ranches and sprinkler system plans that's one
thing.
If you are pushing the stuff that's another.
Hardware is cheap, Software and users time is not.
Your system spec's are essentially 2-3 year old boxes.
Work fine in some environments, not so well in others.

[Anonymous]

>>Being in IT, how frightened would you be by the OP's statement that his
company's IT group went to the website & are using the min. requirements
posted as a justification for a configuration.<<

We do that all the time concerning applications that we know little or nothing about.
A lot of sites now list Minimum and recommended specs.
We always chose recommended plus some more horsepower so the box can stay on the floor for a year or more without surgury.

Must have been a bad day in the IT shop for them to snap back like that.