On clients, we recommend collecting less data. The same objects could be collected, but an hour's activity each day should be enough. Use the at command to schedule the monitor utility to log the data each day. You can skip a step by recording at 6-minute intervals initially. This gives ten data points, or 70K, per day. Use an MS Test script to append these directly to your archive. This will grow to 1.5 MB in a month, which could be compressed and placed on a floppy disk after it is exported, so it can be used by a spreadsheet or database application. (Utilities to compress and expand files are shipped on the Windows NT SDK.) Log files compress to about 30–40% of their original size. Again, all of this can be automated with MS Test with a little effort.
Once you have all this data, the chances that you will be able to get that next piece of equipment when you need it are greatly improved. Bosses are easily swayed by 3-D charts. If that doesn't work, add music, or a full-motion video of you working in slow motion. On second thought, maybe that last idea wasn't so great.