Create a Computer Replacement Plan
for Your Department
Director of A&AA Computing Services
jonesey@uoregon.edu
Are your staff’s computers too old to run modern software? Do some people seem to get new computers frequently while others’ just keep getting older? Do you know how many computers are in your department and when they were purchased? If these questions worry you or sound familiar, consider creating a computer replacement plan.
Start with an inventory. In order to know when to replace your computers, you first need to know what computers your faculty and staff are using. This means creating and keeping an inventory of your computers. Keep your inventory in a way that works for you; that way, you’ll be more likely to use it. I keep my 500-computer inventory in an Excel spreadsheet with the following columns: building, room, person’s name, computer name, manufacturer, model, serial number, operating system version, year purchased, month purchased, memory, hard disk, processor, and optical drive. You can use your inventory to determine when customers’ computers will need to be replaced and to create a budget for the upcoming year’s computer replacement costs.
Decide on a replacement cycle. You will need to decide how often to replace your computers. This is a subject of some debate; your cycle may differ from the one described below. The main thing to remember is that implementing a computer replacement plan is better than replacing computers on an ad hoc basis. In the School of Architecture and Allied Arts (A&AA), we settled on the following replacement cycles for different categories of computers:
- Staff computers: every three years
- Faculty, lab, and server computers: every four years
- Retired and adjunct faculty offices, and other low-demand uses: every six years
The cycle you choose should be one that makes sense for your unit, both technologically and financially. It sometimes surprises people that we replace staff computers more often than faculty computers, but it makes sense when you look at the demands that are placed on staff computers. Staff work at their desks eight hours each day, work in multiple programs simultaneously, and are often forced to upgrade their software or hardware to keep up with upgrades to administrative computing systems.
If you have created an inventory as recommended above, you can add a column for the replacement cycle and use it to calculate when each computer is due for replacement.
A sample computer replacement plan. In A&AA, we decided it was in the best interest of the school to ensure that all members of the school community had access to computers that met their basic computing needs. To that end, the school created a plan that funds computer replacements for staff and tenure-related faculty.
When a computer reaches its replacement age, A&AA Computing Services works with the faculty or staff member to choose an appropriate replacement computer. Faculty and staff are required to purchase a new computer when their current computer is due for replacement. The purpose of this requirement is to ensure that faculty and staff have computers modern enough to perform necessary work functions and to avoid excessive support burdens on computing services staff.
Some faculty and staff may require more powerful computers or more frequent updates than our plan is designed to fund. Those who require more than the budgeted amount for a new computer, or who require a new computer more often than the plan can fund, are encouraged to seek other sources of funding, including grants, ASA funds, and departmental funds. Faculty, staff, and departments who obtain other sources of funding for computers still receive full funding through the computer replacement plan. New faculty members are expected to purchase their first computer from startup funds.
Faculty and staff computers that are replaced are handed down for lower-demand uses, including adjunct faculty offices, retired faculty offices, and student employee work spaces. A&AA Computing Services supports computers until they are six years old.
Benefits of a computer replacement plan. The primary benefit of our computer replacement plan is a feeling of fairness, equity, and predictability among our faculty and staff. They know that there is a fund available to replace their computers when they reach replacement age. Before the computer replacement plan, funding was ad hoc; some people got new computers, and some people struggled along with old technology for years.
In our school, the computer replacement plan has had disproportionately positive effects on faculty and staff morale, given the relatively low level of expense involved.
Feel free to contact me at jonesey@uoregon.edu for further information about creating a computer replacement plan for your department, school, or college.