What To Look For In a Business Desktop

What To Look For In a Business Desktop

A realty of the 21st Century is that most people can’t own a business and not have a reliable desktop PC of some sort involved. Whether you’re a mom & pop candle store, a family-owned deli or a construction company, you’re going to need a computer.

Outfitting yourself or your workgroup with desktop PCs is an important decision, and one that shouldn’t be taken lightly. You don’t want to buy something that isn’t user friendly for your staff, or purchase something that will be quickly obsolete.

Nathan Emberton, founder and owner of Computer Hope, says before planning on making a purchase, a business owner needs to ask themselves several important questions about the buying decision.

  • Do you want a desktop or tower case?

  • Will the case fit on top of or below your desk?

  • Will the drives need to be accessible, or will they be positioned the way you want them to be positioned?

  • Does the case support the standards of motherboards? This is important if you want to upgrade your computer in the future.

A good piece of advice is to not buy consumer PCs. They don’t offer the features a specialized business PC has. Tech gurus will tell you that business desktops last longer, are easier to service, and are easier to update.

Another pro tip is to choose one operating system and use it throughout your entire business. You don’t want some people working on a Microsoft Windows operating system, and others on Apple’s Mac OS. It will make things much harder for your company to sync data and important processes.

When looking at performance, dual-core processors (such as AMD A4 or Intel Core i3 models) are recommended for a business setting. Quad-core is best for companies that use a great deal of graphics, gather lots of analytics, or just want the fastest speed they can get.

You always want space to grow and improve your productivity, so if you think you may be expanding a lot, you may want to go with a Mini Tower or a small form factor (SFF) budget desktop. These make it easy to upgrade components and expand your desktop’s functionality. They provide room for an extra internal hard drive, PCIe x16 graphics card slot, PCI or PCIe expansion slots, or even another optical drive.

When it comes to memory, all businesses should have at least 4 gigabytes of RAM, and mid-size businesses or those with a quad core drive should opt for 8GB or 16GB. Most business PCs come with integrated graphics, and that should be enough for most people in the office.

Internet security is obviously important, as a bad virus can turn a great computer into a not-so-great paper weight, so ensure you keep your business computers protected. Often simply updating the virus software your computer came with is enough.

Warranties aren’t always a great deal—in fact, they seldom are. Sure, a warranty provides some extra peace of mind, but they’re expensive and you should really think hard about whether you really need that extra protection.

You and your staff will be using these computers every day for a long, long time, so make sure your PC is efficient and does everything you need to get the job done well. Make sure you run the same operating system on all your computers, have space to expand and upgrade, have at least a dual core processor with 4GB of RAM—and be skeptical of warranties.

Was this content helpful?