1. Hardware Costs Purchasing Computer Systems for Your Workgroup You have been asked to get pricing information for a potential purchase of PCs for the members of your workgroup. Go to the Internet to get prices for these units from Dell and Hewlett-Packard. Look for a high-end office desktop model. The below table shows the specifications for the basic system you have been asked to price and potential upgrades to each feature. You will want to get a price for the basic system described below and a separate price for each of the upgrades shown. Component Basic Unit Upgrade CPU (gigahertz) 2.8 3.4 Hard drive (gigabytes) 160 500 RAM (gigabytes) 1 2 Removable media 16 x DVD + R/W 48 x DVD + R/W Monitor 17 inch flat screen 19 inch flat screen Select the standard software licenses; your IT department will install the necessary software for your workgroup. Take a two-year warranty is not available; simply note any differences in the coverage with the closest match. a. Prepare a spreadsheet summarizing this pricing information and showing the cost from each supplier of the following options: (1) Units with the basic configuration, (2) the incremental cost of each upgrade separately, and (3) the cost of a fully upgraded unit. If you cannot find features that exactly match the requirements, then use the next higher standard for comparison and make a note of the difference. b. Prepare a set of Power point slides summarizing your results. Include a discussion of the warranty and servicing contract options offered by each supplier. 2. Price and Performance Trends for Computer Hardware Hardware Analysis The table below details price and capacity figures for common components of personal computers. Typical prices for microprocessors, random-access memory (RAM), and hard disk storage are displayed. The performance of typical components has increased substantially over time, so the speed (for the microprocessor) or the capacity (for the storage devices) is also listed for comparison purposes. Although not all improvements in these components are reflected in these capacity measures, it is interesting to examine trends in these measurable characteristics. a. Create a spreadsheet based on the figures above and include a new row for each component, showing the price per unit of capacity (cost per megahertz of speed for microprocessors and cost per megabyte of storage for RAM and hard disk devices). b. Create a set of graphs highlighting your results and illustrating trends in price per unit of performance (speed) or capacity. c. Write a short paper discussing the trends you found. How long do you expect these trends to continue? Why? d. Prepare a summary presentation outlining the points from your paper (above). Be sure to link your Excel chart into the Power Point presentation so that it automatically updates when any data change in the spreadsheet.