I was chatting to a friend last night who happens to purchase and install hundreds of desktops in a very large company, which shall remain nameless. He was explaining just how this particular company, which has hundreds of employees on one site alone, chooses hardware.

It’s not down to budget or hardware, as you might expect – as long as they come in at around £350 they’re fine, he says, for what’s demanded of them, whatever the internal specification. Far more important are the needs of the IT department itself, and that comes down to the shape of the case.

What’s needed is “great stability and no scratch-each-otherness” when piled on top of each other, says my friend. When big bundles of computers come in they’re piled up on a desk where they’re given a standard disk image, transferred to a trolley and taken all over the site to users. Most cases don’t stand up well to this abuse, but he’s found one that does, and it has become the backbone of the organisation, all because of its “no scratch-each-otherness”.

It’s interesting that buying decisions can be made on the basis of something manufacturers may never have considered.