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Story: Intel urges SMEs: Don't delay PC refresh

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Beware geeks bearing advice

That survey covered a lot of ground, which means there's going to be a lot of variation across those geographies.

So just to be parochial for the moment and, I'd hope, not too complacently starry-eyed, in the UK the problem of viruses and other malware attacks is unlikely to be as bad as it would be in countries where software piracy is far more prevalent.

In my analyst days, we researched how this worked, and there is a strong correlation between average national income and software piracy: the lower the average wage, the higher the piracy rate. So far so obvious, but the consequence is naturally enough that people don't allow their systems to report back to Microsoft for updates, leaving them more vulnerable. But assuming that applying patches makes you safer - I'd guess overall it does although it ain't necessarily so - it's also the case that you don't need a new PC to be safer. Just uprate the OS...

I'm also surprised by PSU failure rates of 49 percent and HDD failures of about a third - you have to wonder whether many of the companies surveyed were taken for a ride by a local installer looking for more business.

It hardly needs repeating that hardware makers are bound, self-interestedly, to tell you to upgrade - especially in a recession when the PC cycle has been disrupted....

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