Alright it's quite a few questions, and I don't expect them all to be answered but just what ever you could and multiple people replying is fine.
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What are the form factors used how has this changed over recent years? What are the “real costs” of personal computers to his/her business including maintenance and training?
Describe the kinds of electrical power issues his or her firm encounters. How much power do all their computers use? What kinds of backup power options do they have? Have they considered reducing their “carbon footprint” by reducing power consumption?
Describe the various kinds of motherboards in the computers they use. How do they manage so many different types of motherboards? What are the update cycles for replacing motherboards? Has the diversity of motherboards declined over time? Ask them to describe the various kinds of central processors they use in their firm. How do they manage so many different types of microprocessors? How long a life do they expect processors to have? What are the update cycles for replacing processors, or do they wait for computers to fail before updating? How have power management issues affected their use of CPU.
Describe the various kinds of computer memory found in their computers. How do they manage so many different types of computer memory? How long a life do they expect memory modules? Do they increase memory size of existing boards or do they replace entire boards instead. Ask them to describe the problems they have encountered with computer buses and expansion cards. What kinds of applications tend to trigger computer bus speed issues? How do they know a computer bus is the problem when a client PC is experiencing problems completing jobs? What corrective actions do they take when they suspect a computer bus is not working properly? How do they use expansion cards?
Describe the issues they have encountered with managing hard drives in a large population of PCs. How have hard drives changed in size and reliability in their experience? Are they now switching to SATA drives for some applications and PCs? Do they use SCSI drives? How do the alert users to potential hard drive failures?
Describe the networks used in their business, the topologies of those networks, and the protocols used.
Describe the problems they have encountered with removable and portable storage devices, from optical drives (CDs) to USB jump drives.
What kinds of security issues arise, and reliability issues. Describe the problems they have encountered with input and output devices in their organizations. This would include everything from keyboards and mice, to scanners, speakers and printers (as well as the cables required to connect them to PCs).
Discuss how their organization manages printers, and production of printed documents. What efforts have they undertaken, if any, to reduce the volume of paper document production? Why is this such a difficult goal to achieve?
Describe the problems they are encountering with managing the rapidly growing population of portable systems. What kinds of security issues have they encountered? What kinds of losses of personal devices have they encountered?
