Leasing IT equipment - worth it or not
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@scottalanmiller said:
Some things here...
- They are not old or crusty, you are exhibiting the same behaviour as the users that just didn't like getting something old.
What I was admitting to, basically.
- If the users complain because they want money wasted, fire them, they aren't there on behalf of the business and don't care if the company succeeds. Wrong people to have hired. Who let them complain that money wasn't being wasted on vanity?
Good luck.
- Big enterprises don't do this. Fortune 100 companies deploy what they deploy. You'd never get users allowed to complain that they weren't getting something new.
Sure they do, but management just doesn't care in those situations.
- How did the users find out that they were used?
They look at the equipment and can tell from a date stamp or something else that it's not new (i.e. a scratch on the case, etc)
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
They all have at least 4 GB RAM and most have HDDs. When the drives fail and they are out of warranty I'd drop in cheap SSDs.
So, just to be clear, you are deploying "new" what I was not dealing with used four years ago. This is exactly what I am talking about. Having to get poor quality or super low end new when you could have high end used. You call any machine that is used at all "krusty", yet I would say that your machines, while not technically used, fall below the minimum line I would have been purchased used long ago. So there is a definite mismatch here in values.
I paid around $800 each for current generation i5 processors with 4 GB RAM, desktop without monitors and laptops were roughly the same price. Desktops are the HP Elite series with 3 year warranties, and the Laptops are Probooks with 1 year warranty.
In the end you're probably right. Had I looked for a good source of used equipment (no more than 3 years used) I might have been able to pick them up for half what I paid.
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@scottalanmiller said:
What I also find surprising is that users are okay with eleven year old machines if they are bought new yet are not okay with two year old machines that are used?
When you tell them that.. hey your current computer is 11 years old.. you're choice, keep that or switch to this 2 year old used computer, most likely they will take the 2 year old computer.
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User experience and "buy in" is huge, and easily worth the additional cost.
I'll speak for my environment, but the additional cost is honestly peanuts on what we pay highly trained and skilled staff (80 something percent of our staff has a PhD). It improves morale and makes staff interactions way more enjoyable, we saw it come back in spades in the tickets (and the tone of the tickets) we receive.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
What I also find surprising is that users are okay with eleven year old machines if they are bought new yet are not okay with two year old machines that are used?
When you tell them that.. hey your current computer is 11 years old.. you're choice, keep that or switch to this 2 year old used computer, most likely they will take the 2 year old computer.
So at some point, if you don't offer new, seems like they will happily take used. You just have to set user expectations.
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@Dashrender said:
- Big enterprises don't do this. Fortune 100 companies deploy what they deploy. You'd never get users allowed to complain that they weren't getting something new.
Sure they do, but management just doesn't care in those situations.
Or the opposite. Management DOES care about doing IT well and isn't going to let IT budget get hosed because users demand that money go to them for something that doesn't matter instead of getting the right equipment at the right price.
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@Dashrender said:
They look at the equipment and can tell from a date stamp or something else that it's not new (i.e. a scratch on the case, etc)
Your users are climbing under desks and pulling service labels? What kind of people do you hire?
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@MattSpeller said:
User experience and "buy in" is huge, and easily worth the additional cost.
User experience doesn't improve, that IT repeats that adds to the myth. But used can be just as nice or nicer. User doesn't mean bad. New doesn't mean good.
User "buy in" is important, but for a desktop? You are running into a level of user problems I've not experienced. I've never heard of a company deploying a good desktop environment that had users climbing under desks to look for issues they could not detect from the user experience in order to start a grassroots movement amongst the employees to burn the company's money that could have been used to pay them.
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@MattSpeller said:
I'll speak for my environment, but the additional cost is honestly peanuts on what we pay highly trained and skilled staff (80 something percent of our staff has a PhD). It improves morale and makes staff interactions way more enjoyable, we saw it come back in spades in the tickets (and the tone of the tickets) we receive.
So this feels like a conflict. You claim that your staff are highly skilled and trained (PhD means literally zip to me, in fact, it suggests to me they needed a paper to justify them as their skills were lacking, but that is another discussion) but then say that they act like children and are irrational dolts. Can they really be both? That they are petulant and need to know that money was wasted to stroke their ego means that they are unlikely actually valuable staff, IMHO.
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At best, employees like this might have some value, but their goals and the goals of IT and of the business are not aligned. They are not looking out for the business nor are they interested in being valuable to the business.
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This is one reason I like supporting bankers and traders... when you say that something is a waste of money, they understand what that means. I feel like it is a much more adult environment.
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@scottalanmiller said:
User "buy in" is important, but for a desktop?
We have only a handful of desktops; I'd agree that they're less important to purchase new, though I don't think I would unless that's the vast majority of what you're deploying and you don't have any demanding applications.
MS Word cubicle farm? Used, top to bottom, sure.
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@MattSpeller said:
@scottalanmiller said:
User "buy in" is important, but for a desktop?
We have only a handful of desktops; I'd agree that they're less important to purchase new, though I don't think I would unless that's the vast majority of what you're deploying and you don't have any demanding applications.
MS Word cubicle farm? Used, top to bottom, sure.
Where do you need buy in then? Servers, routers, switches, access points? What used gear are they demanding you spend extra on to stroke their egos?
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@Dashrender said:
In the end you're probably right. Had I looked for a good source of used equipment (no more than 3 years used) I might have been able to pick them up for half what I paid.
Age is very little of a factor in good equipment. Only the performance matters to any great degree. Which mostly limits the age too, but not strictly.
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@Dashrender said:
I paid around $800 each for current generation i5 processors with 4 GB RAM, desktop without monitors and laptops were roughly the same price.
So as a cost comparison, our leasing rounds to be comparable (it is tough as this isn't current) was around $190 for a similar machine. This was years ago so likely even cheaper now, more like $170 I would guess for a roughly comparable machine. We were at 4GB of RAM and SSDs for $190 several years ago.
That's more than 400% markup for machines without SSDs! Our old used machines would blow the doors off of those in user productivity.
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One thing that was nice with used gear is that we were able to specify brand new SSDs with 50K - 100K IOPS out the door on day one and could optionally get 8GB of RAM for just a few bucks when needed. And often we were given months to pay too, great terms.
After having worked with (and used) older desktops, I was sold.
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@scottalanmiller said:
What used gear are they demanding you spend extra on to stroke their egos?
There is an expectation that when you employ professionals, you give them professional gear and a professional environment. Maybe you can pull that off with used kit - I've never thought it worth the trouble.
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Having read threads, especially on SW, where IT folks (who often need the least in terms of desktop power) demanding crazy setups like high end GPUs, 16GB of RAM, i7s with quad core and HT - things that would only make sense for a gaming rig in order to write PowerShell scripts.... I think that IT may be encouraging this behaviour in many cases by wanting to get awesome gear themselves and then, of course, staff who actually generate revenue will want it too.
In cases where you are struggling to get user buy in, are you able to point to machines that you are using yourself that are similar to what the users use? I assume part of the ease of me getting buy in is because users often got better machines than me. Hard to complain when they know that I'm using even older, less expensive gear than they are. Complaining feels a lot more foolish when they lack a use case for better gear.
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@scottalanmiller said:
At best, employees like this might have some value, but their goals and the goals of IT and of the business are not aligned. They are not looking out for the business nor are they interested in being valuable to the business.
employees who are making barely over minimum wage often don't care about their employers, nor are they aligned with the business. This isn't new.
In fact, my higher paid people (except sometimes the top) are the ones that complain the least because they do understand that this equipment is not theirs, and they only need to get their work done and don't need the latest greatest toys to do the job.
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@MattSpeller said:
There is an expectation that when you employ professionals, you give them professional gear and a professional environment. Maybe you can pull that off with used kit - I've never thought it worth the trouble.
I've never known anyone that this didn't work for and I'm used to supporting seven and eight figure professionals. And pulling it off with used kit was zero trouble, never had it even suggested as an issue.
What I can't figure out is where the expectation that IT can be pushed around to just burn budgets comes from. How is this zero effort for the world's biggest banks, hedge funds, even IBM yet small firms feel that their staff can demand things that make no sense for them?
