Client, “Why is your software soooo slow on my computer. It’s taking EONS to load this page. Images aren’t showing up and it’s giving me an error message.”
Support, “Can you send us a screenshot of the error and the item number so we can troubleshoot?”
Client, “Here you go. That took forever too!”
Support, “Is this Windows 98 you’re using sir?”
While I would love to say this is a joke, it’s not. This happens. Online businesses are using 15 year old machines. Maybe Black Friday or Cyber Monday is a good indicator to upgrade if you feel I’m talking about you sir. 😉
Here’s another scary thing that we were testing with. An Account Manager here decided to upgrade his laptop (don’t worry, he was rocking Windows 7, not XP) and he wanted to try out the new ChromeBook. Problem there is you can’t run Skype or Office. It also had low memory and hard drive space. He returned that one in less than 24 hours.
He picked up an Acer Windows 8 touchscreen laptop. Surely this is set with enough memory and hard drive space. Started using it and it was dragging. Why? The processor was an Intel Pentium and so was the ChromeBook. Both laptops were the cheapest options.
Check this out:
With this new Acer, he runs a SpeedTest to see just how fast his internet speeds are. They seemed a little slow compared to his previous Windows 7 machine. So, he returned the Acer and spent $50 more to get a Dell with an i3 Dual Processor Windows 8 laptop. His speeds more than doubled.
When you’re considering the daily tools you use to try and increase productivity at the office, even a brand new computer may not be the answer - it’s what’s inside the machine. But I gotta tell you, if I see another Windows 98 screenshot (or even Windows XP) I’m going to kindly ask that you buy a new computer to run your business! 🙂