Slow computers holding back manufacturing firms

That's among the headline statistics from an independent survey of 100 IT directors commissioned by Diskeeper and conducted by B2B research house, Vanson Bourne. Lost passwords was second, and system crashes third. A concurrent analysis of Twitter revealed more than 1,000 tweets in a month across the UK, concerned about sluggish PCs. Yet, according to Sue Cantwell, managing director of Diskeeper, manufacturers are ignoring one of the most common causes of slow computers and system crashes – fragmented hard drives. More than two thirds (68%) of IT directors at manufacturers do not consider defragmentation a priority, and over half (52%) do not have processes in place to ensure regular defragmentation, she reports. "Fragmentation happens to a hard disk as soon as you save, change or delete files. The changes that you save to a file are often stored at a location on the hard disk that's different from the original file. Further changes are saved to even more locations. Both the file and the hard disk itself become fragmented, and your computer slows down, as it has to search in many different places just to open up the file," explains Cantwell. She points out that fragmentation can be easily and inexpensively prevented by disk optimisation software. "Organisations in the UK can easily save their employees precious time and helpdesk resources by running this type of software with little to no overhead," asserts Cantwell. "The cost to a large enterprise could easily run into the hundreds of thousands. The benefits of taking this simple step include lower backup times, quicker antivirus scans, faster boot up times and greener drives," she adds. The survey saw poor performance cited as the reason behind 33% of PC refreshes – a further indication of the level of waste in many IT departments.