Leasing IT equipment - worth it or not
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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?
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@Dashrender said:
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.
You have minimum wage (or near to it) staff determining IT's purchasing policies? The extra cost of new over used is like an entire week of their salary!
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@scottalanmiller said:
@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.
With the SSD, that's true, but the processor would be a 1st or 2nd gen i3, not a current one, though I agree this probably does not matter for those working webpages and Outlook.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
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.
So where does the problem come from? Is it that the minimum wage workers are given way too much of a voice to management? Why are they allowed to determine how things are done and/or allowed to just complain about something so silly?
Why don't they complain that they need company BMWs? What is making the business willing to waste IT budget but not other budgets?
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@Dashrender said:
With the SSD, that's true, but the processor would be a 1st or 2nd gen i3, not a current one, though I agree this probably does not matter for those working webpages and Outlook.
I'd take a very old processor over having to work from spinning rust in a desktop. Yes, newer is better, but the CPU isn't the bottleneck normally. Another thing that I like about used - it is easier (and cheaper of course) to get systems tuned for usable performance rather than marketing figures.
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@scottalanmiller said:
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.
I definitely brought that to bare in the last few years before our upgrades. I bought myself a quad core 8 GB RAM machine so I could run a few VMs locally for testing ( we didn't have a VM host at the time). i used that computer for 7 years until I replaced it with my current HP 800 G1 SFF i5 4 GB machine (I did give myself an SSD).
But before the upgrade, when people complained, I said.. hey, I'm working on a computer from 2007, just like you and I would show them the manufacture sticker... they normally quiteded right up and walked away.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
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.
I definitely brought that to bare in the last few years before our upgrades. I bought myself a quad core 8 GB RAM machine so I could run a few VMs locally for testing ( we didn't have a VM host at the time). i used that computer for 7 years until I replaced it with my current HP 800 G1 SFF i5 4 GB machine (I did give myself an SSD).
But before the upgrade, when people complained, I said.. hey, I'm working on a computer from 2007, just like you and I would show them the manufacture sticker... they normally quiteded right up and walked away.
I'm on a 2009 these days. It rocks. I think we generally got off lease machines that were just one year old.
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@scottalanmiller said:
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?
Because the owners are closer to the employees, and therefore the employees make emotional pleas to the owners and the owners cave.
When you are a big corp, there are often several levels between the end user and the decision maker on what to buy, therefor all the whining in the world really doesn't matter.
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The performance difference between a HDD and an SSD are staggering at the desktop level. It really just boggles my mind.
We have two engineering machines that are ~5 years old now with no major issues other then basic Windows rot and long boot up times. I'm going to install SSDs in both of these machines with a fresh copy of Windows at the end of the summer and see how much a difference it makes.
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@Dashrender said:
But before the upgrade, when people complained, I said.. hey, I'm working on a computer from 2007, just like you and I would show them the manufacture sticker... they normally quiteded right up and walked away.
Do you feel that you have lost this leverage now?
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@Dashrender said:
Because the owners are closer to the employees, and therefore the employees make emotional pleas to the owners and the owners cave.
Was there ever a discussion with everyone where it was said "What you are asking for is purely for emotion and ego and will actually lower your ability to work on top of making you a $600 less valuable employee?" Did management understand the amount of productivity and financial loss associated with the decision?
I feel that there had to be some loss of communications. What owner throws away $600 per head over something that silly? The owner must be on drugs!! That's insane. And not $600 to get something better, but to get something worse! It's not like there is some soft value here to offset the spend.
I've found that owners tend to see the money going out as "their" money, which it is, unlike a big company where a manager might sign the check because it is the investor's money, not their own.
