Shopping for IT equipment for your small business can be a little daunting, but here are a few tips to help you make the most of your money. Of course, if you want to take the risk out of your IT shopping, contact Liberate IT about an IT support contract tailored to your business.

Vendors

Most tech components are manufactured in the same factory in Taiwan, and Vietnam, so choosing between vendors makes little difference to build quality. Technology components are mass-produced so unfortunately there are a small number of unlucky consumers who receive a faulty part and this is where the vendor’s support differs and you get more for your money. For service level and warranty, we find Dell to be a great partner, whereas we have had nightmares, and even had to simply purchase a replacement ourselves when dealing with other vendors. The quality of the sales and customer service balanced with a good value price is what you should look for.

PCs

Many buyers may still look for the highest numbers across the board, the most Gigabytes of memory, the most terabytes of storage space possible, and the highest letter/number Intel processor possible, but you may be surprised with what you get.

Intel Processors

A website such as cpubenchmark.net can tell you that some i3 processors are better than i5 and even i7 processors! Make sure you look up the stats of your processor online before buying, or at the very least check the generation of your processor e.g. I7-6800 is a 6th generation processor and an i7-7*** processor is a 7th generation processor. As of September 2017, the 8th generation Intel processors are the latest, introducing the new i9 processor for the high-end market.

If you enjoy multitasking at work then you may want to move toward a processor with more cores. If you concentrate on one application at a time, such as graphic design or using a single line of business application, then a faster processor with fewer cores is more suitable.

If you are purchasing a batch of computers for your business, just give Liberate IT a call and we will happily check the specs for you.

Storage

Computer storage comes in many varieties, with different interfaces (or sockets), different formats such as HDD and SDD, and differing ‘bus’ speeds.

At Liberate IT, we rarely recommend an old spinning disk Hard drive because these are far too slow and sluggish for modern computing and software. Manufacturers ship most new PCs with solid-state disks which run far faster and are less susceptible to physical damage and interference (very important for laptops). Replacing an old hard drive with an SSD will improve boot times, load times, and significantly improve application performance for Microsoft Outlook and other apps.

There is a new generation of internal storage known as M.2 NVMe storage which connects more directly to the computer’s processors again significantly improving computer speeds over SSDs. We’re excited about NVMe and we’re waiting for these to become more affordable for the average small business IT support.

So remember, don’t just choose the computer with the most storage space, think about the format of the hard drive, and what you are going to use it for. The best configuration is normally an SSD or M.2 boot drive, with a large HDD for cost-effective data storage.

Monitors

Choosing a good monitor is very important in business, especially when your employees will be staring at them for the whole working day. Older TN panel monitors tend to flicker more causing headaches, and emit more blue light that strains and tires eyes. Any responsible business owner should consider their employee’s well-being when purchasing IT peripherals.

We recommend choosing a flicker-free monitor, such as an IPS monitor. These monitors have blue light reduction modes and smooth any flickering. IPS monitors also give better colour depth and image quality.

The flexibility of a monitor mount or stand should also be considered. Monitors should be raised so that the top of the screen is at eye level. This encourages your employees not to slouch or strain to see the screen correctly.

Please remember to take regular breaks from your monitor. We always use this as an excuse to make the tea!

Those are just a few tips for when buying IT equipment. We provide a free consultation to all our IT support clients and help them choose the perfect tech to meet their needs. Get in touch if you are looking for support!