I tried to bring up a common program which took so long that had I needed to type a letter, a manual typewriter would have been quicker. The computer had never had never been subjected to basic daily maintenance.

By not performing maintenance on the computers, allowing the users to save everything to the hard disk then claim the computers are "obsolete", which is why they run so very slowly. In offices concerned with documents when computers run so slowly as to take "forever" to bring up the word processing program, "a day" to send a message to a printer, the office is handicapped. Even new out of the box computers will soon be running like 486s, when the drives are cluttered with excess files and fodder scattered like confetti across the platters because there has been no defragging, no clean up, nor removal of temporary files.

In early days, true secretaries or typists, were responsible for cleaning their machines. From using a pin to clean keys to mentholated spirits to wipe down a roller. Anyone who uses a computer must be taught how to do simple maintenance.

before the computers were reloaded, I did a quick inventory. It should be common knowledge to employees that nothing should be downloaded on the computers which is not business mandated.

Fortunately, in this company, the original CDs were present and each machine had its hard drive cleaned, the Operating System reloaded along with necessary software. The employees were taught how to do a disk clean up and a defragging.

Subsequently, the computers ran as fast as they were supposed to, and the company saved thousands of dollars. Never allow your It "god" to disable or hide the maintenance packages. And make sure when you are advised to replace your computers, they really do need replacing? Invest in somebody that knows the difference instead, find a good IT professional or administrator.