office machine memory requirements

[Turbonium]

Let's say you're building a basic office machine today. Would it be pointless to give it, say, 16 GB of RAM, for the sake of future-proofing it? Ignore the difference in cost (which is marginal).

I was thinking 8 GB is the current amount that is considered "plenty" for an office machine, with 4 GB being the minimum for acceptable performance and longevity.

Assume the machine will be used for the next decade.

 

[Revolution 11]

So will you be sticking to a single OS or upgrading throughout the years? Because if you are sticking with Windows 7 and you only use the PC for office tasks (word processing, spreadsheets, etc) with regular maintenance done, 8 GB is fine. Take care not to load the PC with unnecessary startup software and other junk or the RAM may not be sufficient for 10 years+.

 

[Coup27]

4GB is fine for an office machine running Windows 7 or even Windows 8 and should still be capable in 10 years time. Office duties, email, printing and web browsing are all very light duty tasks and my company still has a Pentium 4 with 2GB of RAM as an office machine which gets used every day.

Your biggest threat will be what was mentioned above, junk. If the machines are domain controlled and the users don't have admin rights then you have eliminated that problem, but if they have admin rights then you'll be visiting the machine throughout the year anyhow.

 

[Turbonium]

...my company still has a Pentium 4 with 2GB of RAM as an office machine which gets used every day.

What OS?

 

[snoylekim]

The sweet spot for office use is 4 G on a 64 bit Win 7 Enterprise or Pro build .. we've tested it a bit in our environment .. This allows an Outlook with 10-20 emails open, some Powerpoint and Excel spreadsheets ..and maybe an Oracle or SAP session running .. We recommend 8 Gig for some of our heavy duty Excel/Access users , or anyone involved in graphics .. 16 Gig is tough to swamp unless your office is a phot/printing or IT development Office

 

[Cerb]

Let's say you're building a basic office machine today. Would it be pointless to give it, say, 16 GB of RAM, for the sake of future-proofing it? Ignore the difference in cost (which is marginal).

No. >8GB is, and will remain, for quite some time, useful primarily for those of us that do a bunch of RAM-hogging crap with our machines. Gamers will be able to take advantage of 4-8GB, depending on games and BG apps. Office users just want 4GB, because Windows 7 just acts better with >2GB (I'll bet there are some low memory behaviors that kick in when under certain thresholds).

As always, the best future-proofing is to keep some of the money in your bank account for use when the future comes. Now-proofing is what you should concern yourself with.

 

[Nothinman]

Let's say you're building a basic office machine today. Would it be pointless to give it, say, 16 GB of RAM, for the sake of future-proofing it? Ignore the difference in cost (which is marginal).

I was thinking 8 GB is the current amount that is considered "plenty" for an office machine, with 4 GB being the minimum for acceptable performance and longevity.

Assume the machine will be used for the next decade.

Planning on using a machine for 10 years doesn't seem too smart, software changes too quickly. 5 years has become the de facto standard for a reason.

But if it's really only going to bused for MS Office, 4-8G should be fine, depending on the size of the user's mailbox and other things like the size of the spreadsheets they're using. If they're using pivot tables for large data sets you may want more.

Another huge factor is your company's ERP or PSA system, most are poorly designed (at best) pigs that need a decent amount of memory. Our PSA system is a real memory hog and I would say that 8G is the absolute minimum for it and Office right out of the box if you want to keep user whining to a minimum.

 

[BrightCandle]

Well I'll put it this way - I work in an office and I use 16GB daily. So if you equip it with 8GB there are already some users who will be starved for RAM because they do work you don't anticipate. RAM is probably the single component that gives more life to a PC, you can survive for a long time without more CPU performance or a faster/larger drive but RAM keeps getting eaten up with each successive software upgrade cycle.

 

[aj654987]

It depends a lot if its for a small office or for a huge company. The computers at my job have all kinds of crap running in the background (AV, backup stuff, encryption stuff ect) which uses up more ram.

Though at the same time, a large company has more computers so is more likely to use less ram since they have so many machines to buy. (ie upgrading from 4gig to 8 gig for a few hundred machines versus a small office upgrading 5 machines)

If its up to you then go with 8 gigs since ram is so cheap these days.

 

[aj654987]

Well I'll put it this way - I work in an office and I use 16GB daily. So if you equip it with 8GB there are already some users who will be starved for RAM because they do work you don't anticipate. RAM is probably the single component that gives more life to a PC, you can survive for a long time without more CPU performance or a faster/larger drive but RAM keeps getting eaten up with each successive software upgrade cycle.

yeah we got some core2 winxp machines that are really crippled with only 1 gig where the cpu and everything else is just fine but they are super slow. The 2 gig machines are way more useable.

 

[Coup27]

What OS?

XP but 7 will be the next XP in terms of corporate longvegity. Businesses ignored Vista and 8 offers nothing for a business so 7 will be around for a long time and an office only machine will be fine with 4GB.

Well I'll put it this way - I work in an office and I use 16GB daily.

That's not the same as the original question though. CAD designers, 3d modelers, video editors all work in an office but that's not the same as a basic office machine. Nobody who does simple office tasks like email, word, excel, printing and web browsing will hit 16GB.

 

[corkyg]

Many good answers, but a lot depends on what kind of office - what is the mission? Real estate can now involve heavy use of imasgery, still and video. Normal admin work doesn'tusually need to do that.

It is also not necessary that one size fits all. Different departments have different missions and products. Design work involving CAD, ORCAD, etc. can benefit from RAM power. Word processing and billing don't need that kind of horsepower.

Future proofing is somewhat illusory. Major technology change cycles are now a bit less than 3 years. Win 7 will be around for another 5 years at least. Planning to use a machine for the next 10 years makes no sense. Some offices would do better leasing machines and keeping them up to date. That can be managed as an expense rather than a capital outlay.

 

[rsutoratosu]

Just FYI, if your user decides to load flash and go to a lot of flash websites, using multiple window or tabs, IE or chrome will eat memory fast.

I have laptops on 8gb because people refuse to close things down. ie 8-10 tabs per ie window with 8-10 sheets open in excel, 5-6 word documents and 10 pdf documents opened.

W7-64 works well with a lot of stuff opened but needs a lot of memory too.

Flash are bulk of the memory drain, sometimes ie with hold 600mb of memory x3-5 depending on how many windows and tabs are opened

 

[Eug]

4 GB is fine. 8 GB can be better but it depends on the user. 16 GB is usually a waste of money.

 

[Coup27]

OP - Can you define the exact usage? There's obviously numerous different situations which could be classed as basic.

 

[Turbonium]

Future proofing is somewhat illusory. Major technology change cycles are now a bit less than 3 years. Win 7 will be around for another 5 years at least. Planning to use a machine for the next 10 years makes no sense.

The small/home office I'm thinking of building a machine for literally upgrades about every 10 years, given my experience. Proof: Pentium 166 system was replaced by a Pentium 4 system, and the Pentium 4 is still being used today.

OP - Can you define the exact usage? There's obviously numerous different situations which could be classed as basic.

The vast majority of usage is for office apps, e-mail, and Internet surfing (and IM programs), all while running a modern OS like Windows 7. It needs some overhead room to grow in terms of usage, given the likelihood of it being (or not being) upgraded anytime soon, hence the RAM question.

Basically, I want to build a budget system, which will easily destroy the P4 system regardless.

I thought of upgrading the RAM on the P4 box, but the mobo only supports up to 2 GB, which isn't enough to run Windows 7 at acceptable levels, especially along with other apps. Continuing to run XP isn't really a good option, for numerous reasons.

 

[Eeqmcsq]

Then I think what you originally posted sounds fine. 4GB is good. 8GB is better. 16GB is overkill. 2x4GB is currently sold for around $35, definitely cheap enough to be put into an office machine build.

 

[Coup27]

The vast majority of usage is for office apps, e-mail, and Internet surfing (and IM programs), all while running a modern OS like Windows 7. It needs some overhead room to grow in terms of usage, given the likelihood of it being (or not being) upgraded anytime soon, hence the RAM question.

Based on this information I think 4GB is fine.

My work are all having new machines this year and I am specifying 4GB for everybody with the most strenuous task being AutoCAD Electrical 2012 - but when that application runs at the moment on a Pentium D with 2GB of RAM, I think an IB i3 with 4GB will be fine. SSDs all the way obviously.

 

[Nothinman]

The small/home office I'm thinking of building a machine for literally upgrades about every 10 years, given my experience. Proof: Pentium 166 system was replaced by a Pentium 4 system, and the Pentium 4 is still being used today.

Unless it's a restricted system for something like door security, security cameras, an ancient VM system, etc I would consider that pretty poor IT management. Back in the Pentium 1 166Mhz days PCs were a ton more expensive and it required a significant amount of cash to replace one so it made sense to only replace them when absolutely necessary. But now, PCs are a commodity which also means the hardware quality has gone down with the cost so failures are more common. It's much smarter and probably cheaper in the long run, to budget in a refresh every 5 or so years maybe 7 at the outside.

 

[Turbonium]

Unless it's a restricted system for something like door security, security cameras, an ancient VM system, etc I would consider that pretty poor IT management. Back in the Pentium 1 166Mhz days PCs were a ton more expensive and it required a significant amount of cash to replace one so it made sense to only replace them when absolutely necessary. But now, PCs are a commodity which also means the hardware quality has gone down with the cost so failures are more common. It's much smarter and probably cheaper in the long run, to budget in a refresh every 5 or so years maybe 7 at the outside.

It's a home office system. Honestly, how is that bad (aside from the OS being ancient)? There's no reason to get a newer system from what I can tell. Please clarify.

 

[Nothinman]

It's a home office system. Honestly, how is that bad (aside from the OS being ancient)? There's no reason to get a newer system from what I can tell. Please clarify.

OS being ancient is a valid concern. In 10 years we'll be on or close to Win10 or 11 depending on how MS manages recent releases.

Others are availability of replacement parts. In 10 years we may be on another hard disk interface which would mean SATA drives would be significantly more expensive than they are now, same with memory. And the commodity level of hardware making them lower quality there's a much higher chance of you having to replace hardware in that thing. I've had to replace the hard disk in almost every one of our Dell laptops which are only around the 2-3 year old mark now.

And there's no way you're going to get a warranty for 10 years, so are you willing to risk this business on unsupported hardware for the last 3 or so years?

I just don't see how it's possible to justify that when a new PC costs <$2K. Are you really telling me that even this SOHO business can't fit that into their budge every 5 years?

 

[Turbonium]

OS being ancient is a valid concern. In 10 years we'll be on or close to Win10 or 11 depending on how MS manages recent releases.

Others are availability of replacement parts. In 10 years we may be on another hard disk interface which would mean SATA drives would be significantly more expensive than they are now, same with memory. And the commodity level of hardware making them lower quality there's a much higher chance of you having to replace hardware in that thing. I've had to replace the hard disk in almost every one of our Dell laptops which are only around the 2-3 year old mark now.

And there's no way you're going to get a warranty for 10 years, so are you willing to risk this business on unsupported hardware for the last 3 or so years?

I just don't see how it's possible to justify that when a new PC costs <$2K. Are you really telling me that even this SOHO business can't fit that into their budge every 5 years?

Dude, this isn't a business by an stretch of the imagination. It's literally a home office (SOHO at best) for one of my parents, lol. You're reading way too much into this. I mean, it's literally used for e-mailing and surfing the Net and YouTube, and printing stuff off of Word.

But yea, I could either spend 60+ bucks to upgrade the P4 to 2 GB of RAM today, then get an OEM copy of Windows 7 for another 100 bucks, OR spend around 450 bucks for an entirely new system with 8 GB of RAM from the start. I'm leaning towards the latter option, simply because 2 GB of RAM is not a lot to go on in my opinion for any sort of long haul (it being the max for the current motherboard). The new system would easily last a good 5 years, given the usage trend. A P4 with 2 GB of RAM? I'm not so sure it would comfortably last 2 years with an OS like Windows 7.

Also: when you state lower quality hardware, are you limiting it to hard drives? Or are things like motherboards and CPUs also affected? I would like to think the quality hasn't gone down over time like in other industries (the old "they don't build them like they used to" saying), especially given the improved capacitor types and such. I mean, are things like motherboards and CPUs inherently of lower quality now?

Keep in mind I only tend to buy Intel motherboards. Not because I'm a fanboy, but I want to do everything I can to ensure a system will last a long time without problems, and I've heard Intel mobos are generally rock-solid stable and built well, if marginally slower than the competition.

 

[Revolution 11]

Concerning security, the latest OS can help a lot but is not necessary for Turbo's case. Windows 7 will have security updates until 2020, that's 7 years of support right there. Using best practices and some common sense is whats really needed. I sometimes use a old Windows 2000 PC and the only malware I have seen was due to a friend bringing his own USB drive and hooking it without my permission. (Anecdotal evidence FTW!)

Turbo, Windows 7 is fine for your case, it will be supported long enough that you could budget a cheap OS upgrade later down the road if needed, and there won't be any compatability-breaking standards in the next 10 years. Some standards might be released but looking at how many existing CPUs are not supporting SSE3 yet, it will take a long time for old computers to die in enough numbers to justify dropping that compatibility. The groups in charge of SATA and PCI-E also make it a point to maintain basic compatibility as much as possible.

I feel that hard drives have indeed dropped in quality but that may just be reduced validation/reliability measures to save on money. HDD makers like to drop warranties, then raise them, then drop them, :|.