Acme Munitions is a small government contractor. They have thirty employees in the office, with a massive peer-to-peer NetBIOS network. Machines range from a pair of 66mhz 486DX2s, with 500MB hard drives, to a pair of Athlon XP 2100+ machines, with 40 GB hard drives. None have any warranty remaining, and no machines have been purchased in 24 months.

As new IT Directory, you have been tasked with establishing a standardized PC purchase plan.

Typically, Engineers need the most powerful machines, while the Executives need large monitors. Manufacturing uses Linux on all their machines, to control a variety of industrial equipment. Their machines do not have to be particularly powerful.

You have been given the freedom to select your favorite vendor, but you will have to justify your choice. Also, be sure to include the operating system(s) you have selected, and their associated costs.

Your writeup should take 1-3 pages, and list off machine costs and specifications, and any necessary 'classes' of machines. Be sure to include length of warranty, and physical size of machines. Engineering also prefers high-accuracy mice for their CAD/CAM work. All non-manufacturing machines will require spreadsheet and word processing software as well. Do not forget to include that in the price of the machine. Also note that Acme Munitions already has a large number of MS Word and MS Excel files, which they must continue to be able to access.

IRS rules allow Acme to depreciate the cost of PCs over 3 years. Five machines are still new enough to be depreciated in the current fiscal year, so Accounting has requested that those machines not be replaced until next year.