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Cheap computer desks are easy to come by – you just have to be a little creative and willing to do some hunting. So, if you’re looking for an affordable workstation, keep reading for a few great hints and tips on where you can find innovative and creative desks on the cheap.

Shop Tables

Shop and tool tables make a fantastic computer desk substitute. They’re durable, inexpensive, ready to work and even have a unique, industrial design. To increase your makeshift desk’s longevity, throw on a few coats of protective varnish to prevent rings or spills from staining the wood surface.

Build on your workshop style and put up a workman’s peg board over your desk. You can then use it to hang your whiteboard or work and computer supplies like network drives, hubs and other computer peripherals and accessories.

The Build it Yourself Desk

If you have some woodworking skills, you can make your own desk and save a lot of money. Start with a woodworking or carpentry plan for a basic table or a simple desk and you’ll find that with little more than a sheet of plywood and $50, you can build a high-quality desk you will be proud of.

The website Woodworker’s Workshop (woodworkersworkshop.com) offers visitors links to hundreds of free plans for various woodworking and carpentry projects, including desks.

If you don’t own a power saw or are uncomfortable doing your own cutting, you can often have your wood cut for you free of charge at your local hardware store. That means you’ll only be dealing with the final construction and finishing of the desk. Keep in mind though that most hardware stores, to ensure employee safety, limit their cuts to pieces that are at least 12 inches long.

The Reclaimed and Recycled Work Surface

Who says a desk has to be a desk and a table has to be a table? Get creative with your work surfaces and transform a vintage 1950s table into a cool desk or a classic antique flea market find into a traditional office work surface. And yes, you can even buy a used desk and benefit from it too.

The best deals for used furniture can be had at garage sales. You may find some great pieces of furniture at antique malls, flea markets or used goods stores, but the prices often aren’t as great as garage sales. You also won’t have the same bargaining power.

Options at Ikea

So, it may not be as fun as building your own desk or digging through garbage for a gem, but Ikea offers a huge selection of cheap computer desks. While their desks aren’t made from the finest materials or to the highest standards, they are affordable and capable of filling a short term need.

Though there is typically some additional time and labor involved in obtaining an inexpensive and usable computer desk, it’s not all that much, and the savings can be significant. This is at least worth a pause for consideration before purchasing an existing desk retail, or even wholesale.

Your printer accomplishes its primary task through the use of printer toner. Many printers these days have a method of displaying the amount of printer toner left within the cartridges. This type of information makes it much easier for you to find out when you need new printer toner.

Picking The Proper Printer Toner

Every printer toner will have an exact number and name, which helps simplify identification As well as subsequent purchases from the store you typically buy at. However, the difficulty typically arises when we are faced with more than one kind of brand such as the generic type, which are usually cheaper, and the company products.

Everyone loves a good bargain, however, to make certain we do not compromise the hardware of our printer by picking the inappropriate toner just to save a few dollars we must ensure that we have chosen a proper printer toner. In order to accomplish this we will need to have at the time of purchase the toner requirements and printer details.

In the event that you are still unable to locate a match, it is best not to go by the way the toner is designed but to inquire with a sales representative who is typically qualified in the field and could possibly be able to assist you in locating the best generic printer toner for your specific printer.

An alternative method which is less costly is to go the way of toner recharging and ink refills. However, you should make certain yet again that the quality of the ink is the same as your printer requirements in order to accomplish the high-quality job you are accustomed to as the quality of the inferior ink or simply the wrong kind will give you less than positive results.

Locating a Bargain

One of the best ways (possibly the only way) is to purchase in large quantities and therefore, save money in the long run. There are companies that offer a refund when you bring back toner that is used and that is an excellent way to save money as well.

Some of the best deals are typically found on the internet, as you will find there are numerous companies that specialize in providing generic toner and therefore, will make available excellent prices. However, when purchasing on the internet check into the cost of shipping with great care as typically they make up for lower-priced items through a higher shipping rate.

If you are looking for a higher printing quality from your printer you should make certain to supply it with the proper toner and/or the right type of ink if you pick the method of recharge or refill. Always have available the printer details as well as a toner and that should be sufficient to help you locate the proper toner for your printer.

In the pharmaceutical industry, while the status of the packaging function might only be that of an appendix, if properly utilized, it can be an invaluable resource of innovation and cost savings.

During the whole process of production, the packaging people are roped in only after the product research and development teams are over with their jobs. And at times they’re brought in even past the stage of product engineering. Naturally, by this stage, the schedule gets tight and there’s barely time left for meeting deadlines, leave aside innovation.

Innovation might not be an invention but just a new way of doing something. And as Peter Drucker identified, it’s one of the only two basic business functions, the other being marketing, it has has been known to result in improved quality, reduced labor costs, improved production processes, reduced pharmaceutical packaging materials, reduced energy consumption, etc. â?? all of which spell profitability.

However, if packaging is only considered as an afterthought, the possibility of innovation is lost somewhere, and consequently its benefits too.

Leveraging Integration for Innovation

Experts believe that integrating the packaging function with the research and development function requires only a few tweaks. To breed innovation it’s important to allow the packaging function more influence within R&D. This is so because when the two functions work jointly, it will enable the packaging department to better help with quality initiatives, continuous enhancement programs, costs reduction, etc.

Also, when the packaging department is aware of the projects that are underway including the high priority ones, it can prepare in advances and has the time necessary to think and innovate, and better use their pharmaceutical packaging equipment.

Further, in addition to just an influence within R&D, a more innovative set-up could include merging R&D and packaging. Because a lot of cost reduction, quality, and continuous improvement depends on packaging, so including packaging within the whole process sounds like a better option.

Abstract

The dictionary defines maintenance as, “The work of keeping something in proper order.” However, this definition does not necessarily fit for software. Software maintenance is different from hardware maintenance because software doesn’t physically wear out, but often gets less useful with age. Software is typically delivered with undiscovered flaws. Therefore, software maintenance is: “The process of modifying existing operational software while leaving its primary functions intact.” Maintenance typically exceeds fifty percent of the systems’ life cycle cost . While software maintenance can be treated as a level of effort activity, there are consequences on quality, functionality, reliability, cost and schedule that can be mitigated through the use of parametric estimation techniques.

1. INTRODUCTION

One of the greatest challenges facing software engineers is the management of change control. It has been estimated that the cost of change control can be between 40% and 70% of the life cycle costs . Software engineers have hoped that new languages and new process would greatly reduce these numbers; however this has not been the case. Fundamentally this is because software is still delivered with a significant number of defects. Capers Jones estimates that there are about 5 bugs per Function Point created during Development . Watts Humphrey found “… even experienced software engineers normally inject 100 or more defects per KSLOC . Capers Jones says, “A series of studies the defect density of software ranges from 49.5 to 94.5 errors per thousand lines of code .” The purpose of this article is to first review the fundamentals of software maintenance and to present alternative approaches to estimating software maintenance. A key element to note is that development and management decisions made during the development process can significantly affect the developmental cost and the resulting maintenance costs.

2. SOFTWARE MAINTENANCE

Maintenance activities include all work carried out post-delivery and should be distinguished from block modifications which represent significant design and development effort and supersede a previously released software package. These maintenance activities can be quite diverse, and it helps to identify exactly what post-delivery activities are to be included in an estimate of maintenance effort. Maintenance activities, once defined, may be evaluated in a quite different light than when called simply “maintenance”. Software maintenance is different from hardware maintenance because software doesn’t physically wear out, but software often gets less useful with age and it may be delivered with undiscovered flaws. In addition to the undiscovered flaws, it is common that some number of known defects pass from the development organization to the maintenance group. Accurate estimation of the effort required to maintain delivered software is aided by the decomposition of the overall effort into the various activities that make up the whole process.

3. APPROACHING THE MAINTENANCE ISSUE

Maintenance is a complicated and structured process. In his textbook, Estimating Software Intensive Systems, Richard Stuzke outlines the typical software maintenance process. It is apparent that the process is more than just writing new code.

The following checklist can be used to explore the realism and accuracy of maintenance requirements.

? Which pieces of software will be maintained?

? How long will the system need to be maintained?

? Are you estimating the entire maintenance problem, or just incremental maintenance?

? What level of maintenance is required?

? Is that which is being called maintenance in fact a new development project?

? Who will do the maintenance? Will it be done organically by the original developer? Will there be a separate team?

? Will there be a separate organization?

? Will maintainers be using the same tools used during development? Are any proprietary tools required for maintenance?

? How much Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) is there? How tightly coupled are the interfaces?

? Some follow-on development may be disguised as maintenance. This will either inflate maintenance figures, or else cause shortfalls if basic maintenance gets pushed aside. These questions will help you ask whether maintenance is being honestly represented.

? Is the activity really an incremental improvement?

? Are healthy chunks of the original code being rewritten or changed?

? Will additional staff be brought in to perform the upgrade?

? Is the maintenance effort schedule regular and fairly flat, or does it contain staffing humps that look like new development?

4. SANITY CHECKS

Although sanity checks should be sought on a year-by-year basis, they should not be attempted for overall development. The reason for this is that maintenance activities can be carried on indefinitely, rendering any life-cycle rules useless. As an example, consider Grady (p. 17):

We spend about 2 to 3 times as much effort maintaining and enhancing software as we spend creating new software.
This and similar observations apply at an organizational level and higher, but not for a specific project. Any development group with a history will be embroiled in the long tail ends of their many delivered projects, still needing indefinite attention. Here are a few quick sanity checks:

? One maintainer can handle about 10,000 lines per year.

? Overall life-cycle effort is typically 40% development and 60% maintenance.

? Maintenance costs on average are one-sixth of yearly development costs.

? Successful systems are usually maintained for 10 to 20 years.

Finally, as in development, the amount of code that is new versus modified makes a difference. The effective size, that is, the equivalent effort if all the work were new code, is still the key input for both development and maintenance cost estimation.

5. FIVE ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES

All software estimation techniques must be able to model the theory and the likely real world result. The real world scenario is that over time, the overlay of changes upon changes makes software increasingly difficult to maintain and thus less useful. Maintenance effort estimation techniques range from the simplistic level of effort method, through more thoughtful analysis and development practice modifications, to the use of parametric models in order to use historical data to project future needs.

5.1 Level of Effort

As is sometimes the case in the development environment, software maintenance can be modeled as a level of effort activity. Given the repair category activities and the great variance that they show, this approach clearly has deficiencies. In this approach, a level of effort to maintain software is based on size and type.

5.2 Level of Effort Plus

Stuzke proposed that software maintenance starts with basic level of effort (minimum people needed to have a core competency and then that that basic core staff must be modified by assessing three additional factors; configuration management, quality assurance, and project management. His process addressed some of the additional factors affecting software maintenance.

5.3 Maintenance Change Factor

Software Cost Estimation with COCOMO II (Boehm 2000) proposes a deceivingly simple, but also quite useful methodology for determining annual maintenance. Maintenance is one of the menu selections in the menu bar. In COCOMO II Maintenance encompasses the process of modifying existing operational software while leaving its primary functions intact. This process excludes:

? Major re-design and re-development (more than 50% new code) of a new software product performing substantially the same functions.

? Design and development of a sizeable (more than 20% of the source instructions comprising the existing product)
interfacing software package which requires relatively little redesigning of the existing product.

? Data processing system operations, data entry, and modification of values in the database.

The maintenance calculations are heavily based upon the Maintenance Change Factor (MCF) and the Maintenance Adjustment Factor (MAF). The MCF is similar to the Annual change Traffic in COCOMO81, except that maintenance periods other than a year can be used. The resulting maintenance effort estimation formula is the same as the COCOMO II Post Architecture development model.

As stated previously, three cost drivers for maintenance differ from development. Those cost drivers are software reliability, modern programming practices, and schedule. COCOMO II assumes that increased investment in software reliability and use of modern programming practices during software development has a strong positive effect upon the maintenance stage.

Annual Maintenance Effort = (Annual Change Traffic) * (Original Software Development Effort)

The quantity Original Software Development Effort refers to the total effort (person-months or other unit of measure) expended throughout development, even if a multi-year project.

The multiplier Annual Change Traffic is the proportion of the overall software to be modified during the year. This is relatively easy to obtain from engineering estimates. Developers often maintain change lists, or have a sense of proportional change to be required even before development is complete.

5.4 Managing Software Maintenance Costs by Developmental Techniques and Management Decisions During Development When it comes to maintenance, “a penny spent is a pound saved.” Better development practices (even if more expensive) can significantly reduce maintenance effort, and reduce overall life cycle cost. The more effort put into development, the less required in maintenance. As an example, the software development cost and schedule can be significantly impacted (reduced) by letting the number of defects delivered grow. This cost and schedule reduction is more than offset by the increase in maintenance cost. The following discussion is an example of how management decision can significantly affect/reduce software maintenance costs.

Lloyd Huff and George Novak of Lockheed Martin Aeronautics in their paper “Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Performance Based Software Sustainment for the F-35 Lightning II” propose a series of development and management decision designed to impact and reduce software maintenance costs. They propose an eight step process to estimate and control software maintenance . Their proposed steps are:

1. Strive for Commonality
2. Apply Industrial Engineering Practices to Software
3. Engage
4. Adopt a Holistic Approach to Sustainment
5. Develop Highly Maintainable Systems and Software
6. Manage the Off-the-Shelf Software
7. Plan for the Unexpected
8. Analyze and Refine the Software Sustainment Business Case (use Parametric software sustainment cost estimates)

5.5 A Parametric Assessment of Software Maintenance

Parametric models like SEER for Software allow maintenance to be modeled in either of two ways:

Estimating maintenance as a part of the total lifecycle cost. Choosing the appropriate Maintenance category parameters will include an estimate of maintenance effort with the development estimate for the individual software program. Several reports and charts show breakdowns of development vs. maintenance effort. This method is best used to evaluate life cycle costs for each individual software program.

Estimating maintenance as a separate activity. Using the appropriate maintenance parameters for the software to be maintained you can model the maintenance effort as a separate activity. This method will allow you to fine tune your maintenance estimate by adjusting parameters. Maintenance size should be the same as development size, but should be entered as all pre-existing code. This method can also be useful in breaking out total project maintenance costs from project development costs.

A good parametric estimate for maintenance includes a wide range of information. Critical information for completing a software maintenance estimate is the size or amount of software that will be maintained, the quality of that software, the quality and availability of the documentation, and the type or amount of maintenance that will be done. Many organizations don’t actually estimate maintenance costs; they simply have a budget for software maintenance. In this case, a parametric model should be used to compute how much maintenance can actually be performed with the given budget.

Estimating and planning for maintenance are critical activities if the software is required to function properly throughout its expected life. Even with a limited budget, a plan can be made to use the resources available in the most efficient, productive manner. Looking at the diagram above, you can see that not only are the multiple inputs that impact the maintenance, but there are several key outputs that provide the information necessary to plan a successful maintenance effort.

6. Conclusion

The conclusions of this article are:

? Software maintenance can be modeled using a simplistic method like Level of Effort Staffing, but this technique has significant drawbacks.

? Software maintenance costs can be significantly affected by management decisions during the developmental process.

? Software maintenance can be accurately estimated using parametric processes.

? Software maintenance is best modeled when development and management decisions are coupled with parametric cost estimation techniques.

REFERENCES

[1]Software Maintenance Concepts and Practices (second Edition) by Penny Grubb and Armstrong Takang, World Scientific, 2005.
[2]Estimating Software Intensive Systems; Richard Stuzke, 2005, Addison-Wesley.
[3]Lloyd Huff, George Novak; Lockheed Martin Aeronautics; Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Performance Based Software Sustainment for the F-35 Lightning II.
[4]G. Edward Bryan, “CP-6: Quality and Productivity Measures in the 15-Year Life Cycle of an Operating System,” Software Quality Journal 2, 129-144, June 1993.
[5] Software Sizing, Estimation, and Risk Management; Daniel D. Galorath, Michael W. Evans, 2006, Auerbach Publications.

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