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Buying bulk for a nonprofit

A

avatardfuse

Junior Member
Hi folks,

I am a teacher for a nonprofit organization in the USA. Unfortunately, I am also our point person for serving IT needs. I am horribly unqualified so I'll try to explain this the best way I can.

I teach English as a secondary language in a computer lab with the aid of very basic computer software. The program allows the student to do interactive activities, involving audio, reading stories, etc. Picture an archaic version of Rosetta's Stone. The OS is Windows XP

My teaching has been greatly hindered by the sluggishness of our atrocious computers. I've taken it upon myself to investigate how to alleviate this problem. I have built my own gaming PCs for a few years now so I have intermediate knowledge as far as hardware goes. I've never taken a computer class in my life so I'm in the dark regarding software.

Our computers take a few minutes to log in to our server and then "warm up" i.e. start running at a stable pace. For example, after the computer logs in to the desktop, you can wait 10 seconds, click on the Internet Explorer icon, and wait another 2 minutes or so before anything happens. We use Symantec Antivirus, and when looking at the processes tab in the task manager during log in, I noticed Antivirus scans that were really hogging power. Someone outside of my org came in, fiddled with the antivirus registry, and made these scans less prominent.

Nevertheless, these machines are still really slow and my hands are more or less tied in terms of changing anything else software side. I've decided to look into hardware as a solution:

Option A) Currently, we have 12 computers that use P4, 3.0 ghz and Celeron 2.0 ghz processors. Most have about 500 MB of RAM. HDs are between 60-80 GB. They were donated to us before my time. I considered just buying more RAM / better processors but noticed the motherboards are 8xx, which means nothing above DDR1 for ram, nothing above P4 for processor, and no PCI-Express (if my research is correct?). Gutting all of these parts and buying new motherboards may be a costly venture (I did a price list of new motherboards with Core 2 Duo processors and 2 GB of ram for all 12 machines and came up with about 150 dollars for each machine via newegg). As a nonprofit, we are naturally starving for money as it is.

Option B) The other option is accepting a donation of 12 Compaq D530 desktops, featuring P4 3.2 ghz processors, between 1-2 GB of RAM, and 80-160 GB HDs. I've researched this machine a bit and it seems that their motherboards are just as limited as far as upgrades go. I am hesitant to take this donation because it means the powers that be in my org will not revisit this issue probably for a few more years if we get an upgrade this year. Yet, these D530s don't seem to be substantial upgrades as the parts are still outdated. If they featured motherboards that I could install Dual Cores on or something a little more substantial, I would jump on it.

So before going with Option A, which will involve us searching for a grant / donation from else where and probably getting it eventually, I am wondering if there is anything else I can do? I've never been in this kind of position before so am I missing something? Is there an Option C? I am primarily concerned with getting something that will last, which is why I am leaning away from Option B.

Please respond with any suggestions / advice you might have.

Thank you in advance.
 
Take option B.
The P4 3.2GHz machines with 1-2GB of memory should be plenty for your needs.
Why worry about future upgrades? Do fresh XP installs on them (adjust for best performance vs best appearance), and you're good to go.
 
Really? My understanding was that the P4 was primarily holding us down. I've heard people say that there is a marked difference between that and a Dual Core. These are just things that I've heard though.
 
avatardfuse said:
Really? My understanding was that the P4 was primarily holding us down. I've heard people say that there is a marked difference between that and a Dual Core. These are just things that I've heard though.
Click to expand...

this is true for multimedia stuff like compression and games. In the early parts of 2002-2003, computers finally got "fast enough" to run the assortment of our simple mainstream everyday programs. This wasnt because of the pentium 4, its because 1 to 2GB of RAM finally became mainstream. Yeah, for 2003 technology a 3.2 GHz Pentium 4 is "meh" compared to a 2.6 GHz K8, but your program is very easy to run and will be smooth as butter with enough RAM.

Your primary problem is that you're using slow-as-hell hard drives from that time period and running the usual crapload of bloated administrative software that I've seen on school machines my entire life, swapping out pages from your measly 512MB of memory into a pagefile that can probably be written to at about 30 MB/s. Yeah, a ten minute startup sounds about right. Having enough memory will take your hard disk speed mostly out of the swap equation. (you should start up your langauge program and see how much RAM it uses in task manager)

On these educational machines you really shouldn't run norton, and you definitely shouldn't be doing any system scans during class. That is very disk intensive and of course going to cause a problem on those old machines. Please please please do not migrate this practice to the new systems. You can run scans any time. I would definitely ditch norton in general though. There are far more modern antivirus solutions available nowadays that do not hog system resources the way "security suites" tend to do. Just make sure they all have 2GB of memory, dont worry about board/CPU. It sucks that your class probably won't see an upgrade for 5 years, but a dozen decent *new* machines would cost like $300*12 = $3600 and what are the odds of getting that?
 
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* Sure 3.2GHz P4's are slow when compaired to C2D processors.
But you're not going to be encoding video or anything like that. You're basically running office apps.
* MS Security Essentials would be a better option for the machines and budget.
* If the Compaq machines have 1-2GB of memory and 3.2GHz P4's, just purchase fresh hard drives for them.
The 160GB or 320GB WD JB drives would be perfect for those machines (they offer a big bang for the IDE buck), and don't cost much.
 
Thanks for the advice!

I couldn't agree more about the antivirus and that was one of the first moves I tried to make. Unfortunately, the people above me refuse to budge on this and insist on keeping Symantec, which is why I tried the next best thing (making registry changes).
There were 2 processes that were killing the machines on start up: DoScan.exe and Rtvscan.exe . I researched them and found that DoScan has caused a lot of people anguish. The person I had come in to take care of took care of the DoScan problem but didn't do much with Rtvscan as it is a core component.

Option B is sounding better based on your comments. Is there much of a difference between DDR1 and DDR2 RAM? I did not know that the HDs were making such an impact. Will there be compatibility issues between the mobo and HDs (off the top of my head I can't think of any)? I will look into these WDs you mentioned, Blain.

It just seems almost counter intuitive using up my chance to upgrade with what seem to be marginally better parts. But buying anything does indeed mean through a grant / donation and it's a lot easier making a pitch to my people if there isn't a price tag attached to it.

Thanks again for your advice!
 
A P4 3 GHz is a pretty fast machine, it was still an OK platform even for games until around 2005. For simple learning software it should run well under XP.

The current computers may be slow because they are infected with adware, spyware, trojans, etc.

Do you have XP license keys and restore CDs? Try doing format and reinstall on one of the P4 PCs and see if the speed changes. If it is still slow, you might steal RAM from one of the Celerons and see how that changes the speed.

Going from 512 to 768 can make a difference under XP for some programs. If adding RAM helped the speed you might be able to pick up some DDR1 128 MB / 256 MB sticks cheap in the FS/FT forum here since most people want 512 MB or 1 GB sticks.
 
Thanks Dave,

Restoring the machines with a fresh XP is a great idea. Unfortunately, I don't control this part of it, I can only make suggestions.

The plan is to create an image of all needed software installed on the machine (I would assume via Daemon tools or the like). They say that the image will be cleaner and run smoother than the existing machines.
 
Well one way to keep costs low would be to start a replacement cycle where you could replace 3 or 4 PC's every year with some low-end but new budget computers. This way you could minimize expenses by not purchasing all the computers at once. Dell or some other company like HP may have some kind of low-end option coupled with an education or non-profit discount. However, it will still cost around $400 per unit for even a new low-end computer.

Another problem is whether new computers could run old software. This is an issue you may want to look at. I dont know if Windows 7 has the same compatability options to run older 16 bit software.

If you are at a non-profit and do education, then maybe you should look at submitting some grant requests or asking some private business or corp to sponsor your computer upgrade. I would even go so far as keeping track of alumni or people you have helped in the past and hitting them up for donations. Maybe put a little plaque on each computer giving credit for the source of the donation. Instead of getting donations for all the computers at once offer a business a chance to donate the money to purchase one computer. When my kids were in school they asked parents to donate just enough money to purchase one seat for the refurbishing of their auditorium/theater. This way everyone had a chance to make just a little difference.

I was watching a film a while back about a man who was building schools in Afghanistan. He could not get funding and then one day after an attempt at fundraising, the only real sponsor he had ending up being some child from a school who brought in a jar full of coins. This ballooned into schools accross Americal having class fundraisers in each school interested in his project. He still did not know if the war lords would let him build the schools, so he invited them to come see the first school. The war lords played on the swings and decided the school was a good idea without looking inside the school at all.

I saw how a boy scout troop raised $1,000.00 in one day. They purchased 1,000 glow roped like they sell at night events. They sold them all in one day at a local parade for $2.00 each.
 
avatardfuse said:
Thanks for the advice!

I couldn't agree more about the antivirus and that was one of the first moves I tried to make. Unfortunately, the people above me refuse to budge on this and insist on keeping Symantec, which is why I tried the next best thing (making registry changes).
There were 2 processes that were killing the machines on start up: DoScan.exe and Rtvscan.exe . I researched them and found that DoScan has caused a lot of people anguish. The person I had come in to take care of took care of the DoScan problem but didn't do much with Rtvscan as it is a core component.
Click to expand...

your first problem is there.

keep sticking with it till they budge and drop symantec. show them independent anti-virus ratings, reviews, etc, till they agree.

i've seen a decent dual core computer be reduced to a flaming pile of shit by symantec. so yeah, do what is right and get them to drop it.
 
One thing I know about Windows XP is some of the major update packs sometimes cripple it. What happens is the virus software needs to be reinstallad after an update pack. However, if you uninstall and reinstall the virus software it seems to speed it up again; well make it go a little faster. This may be true for other software as well.
 
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Microsoft Security Essentials is good and _free_ unlike Norton / Symantec. Show them the positive reviews and maybe they'll stop paying money to cripple performance.
 
Thanks all for your advice. I will continue to push for a different antivirus.

Does everyone agree that buying new hard drives would help? I'm putting together a pitch.
 
My guess is at least the Pentium 4s need nothing besides a reformat and getting rid of Symantec. Possibly the same for the Celerons.

If that isn't enough then cheap used RAM, adding even 256MB each, will make much more of a difference than a new hard drive.

I didn't have this problem back when I had a P4 with a hard drive from that era:
> "Our computers take a few minutes to log in to our server and then "warm up" i.e. start running at a stable pace. For example, after the computer logs in to the desktop, you can wait 10 seconds, click on the Internet Explorer icon, and wait another 2 minutes or so before anything happens."
 
ygpm

Additionally, some things that help our anemic (p4 w/ 512 RAM) computers at work -

* Disable Indexing if you don't do a lot of searching
* Clear Windows\Temp and Windows\Prefetch
* Clear %username%\Local Settings\Temp
* Clear %username%\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files
* Run Disk Cleanup
* Run Disk Defrag
* Make sure Best Performance is selected in System Properties

You definitely want to do something about the AV.

New hard drives will probably help out a bit as well.

It sounds like you have 2 different types of computers. In that case, I'd recommend fully reformatting and reinstalling on one of each as a test. Once they are configured properly, you can use sysprep and make an images based on these. Then go ahead and install that image on the other machines. This is probably the most expedient way to reformat all the machines in a small organization.

Best of luck to you.
 
What version of Symantec AV are you running? If you are using SEP make sure Application control is off, it kills machine performance.
 
If it were me I would remove the AV from all the pc and instead install a hardware firewall router with anti virus protection. You can get them off ebay for under $200 and that removes all the resource draining, updating of signatures, etc that AV brings.

I realize you would have to sell the idea so I what I would do is gather all the information up on hardware anti-virus and print it out and bring it to the people who control things.
Some examples, I am not connected with these sellers in any way.
http://cgi.ebay.com/SonicWALL-SAVR-...ultDomain_0?hash=item1e588416c1#ht_500wt_1182
http://cgi.ebay.com/TREND-MICRO-NET...ltDomain_0?hash=item45f15df761#ht_4129wt_1161
 
Modelworks honestly that sounds like a great way to get fired. I have NEVER heard of a best practice involving removing AV from the client machine and hoping the router catches everything. USB sticks, Compressed passworded downloads, Virus discovered and added to defs after it has been downloaded, CDRWs, ipods, ... The list of virus vectors goes on and on. Really buddy that is the worst idea ever.
 
I can't remember what version of Symantec we use but I'm sure it's pretty old and the people above me are already in the process of ordering new versions.

I would love nothing more than to reformat and start fresh. Bobross, I am going to pitch what you wrote to my boss and see what pans out. Thanks a bunch.

As for AV hardware, I have seen the name SonicWall floating around our network a few times and suspect we already have that as well.

Ironically, we got pounded by viruses the last 2 days and 2 computers ended up disabled for a while. I'm trying to use this as leverage for different software.

Fingers crossed.
 
What you really need are new hard disks, and a nice, fresh, streamlined clean install of winXP. Disk speed is everything. Do the current computers have SATA? Do the donated ones?
 
1: router based AV is a good idea, but it isnt a replacement for client based AV.
2: your first and foremost problem IS symantec. get rid of it. there are so many better options that symantec is an absurdly stupid course of action.

oh, and..

dude, 12 computers isnt bulk.
 
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Newer version of Norton antivirus are not resource hogs any more, in fact it's one of the least resource intensive AVs now. So if you're upgrading you should be ok there. Like others have said it's most likely the low RAM slowing down your current machines.
 
i simply question the entire idea of teaching language requiring a lab filled with computers.
seems like misuse of resources. if the schools were flush sure it would be a bonus, but as they are stretched thin, it just seems fundamentally ridiculous.
 
Gunbuster said:
Modelworks honestly that sounds like a great way to get fired. I have NEVER heard of a best practice involving removing AV from the client machine and hoping the router catches everything. USB sticks, Compressed passworded downloads, Virus discovered and added to defs after it has been downloaded, CDRWs, ipods, ... The list of virus vectors goes on and on. Really buddy that is the worst idea ever.
Click to expand...

None of that should be happening in a controlled environment to start with. If you are allowing your users to access USB drives, download from anywhere and use cdr and ipods you got bigger problems as no antivirus will save those machines. The only thing you should have to worry about is machines becoming infected via content that you authorize.
 
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I think upgrading the HDs to modern 320GB HDs is a necessity. The newer model drives are so much faster than older 40-80GB HDs, it's not funny. Also, you MUST have enough RAM to prevent swapping to the HD due to lack of RAM. Because as fast as the HD is or may be, it's no substitute for real RAM.

I've got a P4 2.8@3.2 running with 2GB of RAM, on a 60GB 7200RPM HD, and it's definately fast enough for web browsing and basic office apps. (That's my "spare" PC, that stays over at a friend's house for me to use when I go over.)
 
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