4. Make Strategic Purchases: If your employees are complaining about slow computers, buying entirely new machines may not be the best way to fix their problems. Very often, an old (Pentium-3/4 class) computer is more than capable of typical office tasks--if it had enough RAM. Most office PCs sold in the last few years had either 256 or 512 MB of RAM. This just doesn't cut it any more, but the good news is that upgrading RAM is cheap and easy. Instead of buying a new computer, just bump up RAM to 2 GB (approx Rs. 1,600 for DDR2, Rs.2,600 for DDR1) and you'll see immediate speed improvements.

Another way to speed up old machines is to format their hard drives and install a fresh copy of Windows. Over a period of time, Windows tends to accumulate a lot of crud, and becomes slower and slower. Geeks tend to do a fresh install every couple of months, but that's not necessary for a business. A half-yearly process is more than enough, and it is quite easy to set up image-based installation methods that can get a machine up and running in less than ten minutes. If you do have to buy new hardware, look to buy computers that have slightly slower processors, but lots of RAM. Buying used hardware is another way to keep costs down. You can get some surprising bargains on eBay . Most components have long warranties, so you can even exchange them if something goes wrong. Buy smart, and you can save a lot of money.