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The Obama Administration has ordered US federal agencies to hold off on purchasing new PCs in hopes of patching up a broken ordering system.
The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has put a hold on new desktops and notebooks while it sorts through what it says are "thousands" of new system orders every year.
OMB said that because agencies lack a standardized way to order, maintain, and replace their IT infrastructure, officials are forced to seek out their own contracts and purchase orders to get new PCs, leading to huge accumulated costs in waste.
"There is no need for thousands of contracts to purchase common laptops and desktops," the OMB said in its order late last week.
What answer do you predict the US government will reach, "Surfaces for everyone!"?
(Score: 4, Funny) by Dunbal on Wednesday October 21 2015, @02:39PM
Nah they can get a great deal like my wife's Fortune 500 company and get some Apple products for ABOVE market value. Why pay retail when you can pay more! Long live purchasing power. Hey if I buy an extra 2k units can you guys raise the price another 10%?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 21 2015, @03:17PM
But you're saving money because you certainly would have found someone willing to sell it to you for even more! ;-)
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Wednesday October 21 2015, @07:01PM
Hate to be that guy, but it's likely just that your wife's employer signed an extended, business warranty and service.
compiling...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Hyperturtle on Wednesday October 21 2015, @08:13PM
No kidding.
I worked at a place that paid 4x the price of the laptops in question. we're talking TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS PER LAPTOP because an image was made that worked on them out of the box - people applied that image before the box arrived. Someone actually tested all of it prior to arrival and it would join to the domain and what have you. All for $7500 per machine, assuming a $2,500 laptop.
I don't know about you, but I am getting ripped off or I undervalue the services I provide when I charge by the hour. I should be making scripts to apply the same image to dozens of machines for $7500 per machine, and then hiring college students to pack boxes and call UPS to pick them up for delivery to the client. They can even steal some; there will be more than enough profit to replace them with something better (and yeah, things often ended up missing and that was the reward. chances are that is why some management got better laptops than other people, but what do I know).
Not anyone can do this as a business strategy, though. It takes gall. And, it takes attractive sales people, golf, and basketball tickets were necessary to seal the deal, but nothing technical was discussed to get that contract signed, from what I recall. You can sell IT and be the owner of an IT person and you need only be charmismatic, you need not know what any of it is. It is just a plug in the numbers game where the best convincing sounding and good looking person with the most perks will win your business. And, if you get multiple bids.. that's a lot of social calls with attractive people. I know of some insurance companies that had IT decision makers playing exactly that game.
Local folks, if the image was correct for a different part of the business but wrong for the building it was in, were paid $50 to $75 an hour to image about 4 PCs per 8 hour day to correct such inevitable mistakes.
Me? I was upgrading the network. Practically without value compared to the waste I was seeing. Security was done by someone else, but from the looks of it, they'd make a fortune, too.
Chances are the money was being spent on new computers, though...
That doesn't sound optimistic, but it is the rare sales person I have seen that doesn't dress the part and rely solely on the value they provide to the sales process.