Leasing IT equipment - worth it or not
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@Dashrender said:
which is it? common or not, your example specifically says "people leas a NEW car." Once it's traded it, it's off lease. I've never heard of used cars being available for lease
It would be both on lease and off lease at the same time.
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@Dashrender said:
The same goes for computers - Leasing a used computer seems counter-intuitive. The cost of maintaining 3-5 year old computers parts wise gets more and more expensive as the machine ages. So the Leasing company will need to build into the lease price the cost of ensuring that the equipment continues to function during the entirety of the lease, right? or do they just pawn that off on the end user?
Actually it was brilliant. Best value for the customers. The cost of maintaining "old", and we are using the term very loosely here, is not that low because the leasing company was investing in well known, high quality, off lease machines and was able to maintain lots of spares at low cost. The price drop from companies irrationally dumping used machines because they were "old" meant that the prices were way below value. So the leasing was cheaper for the customer than they could possibly do on their own because buying used computers one at a time doesn't carry the same value and the customers lacked the wherewithall to know how to buy effective, used equipment.
It was financially super obvious if you actually looked at the numbers and how it worked. Anything but counter-intuitive. What it actually showed was how crazy it was to buy new and to overbuy so dramatically like most companies do.
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@Dashrender said:
(I figured because the cost maintenance wouldn't be worth it for either the leasing company or the leasing company would have to pad the cost so much to ensure they were covered, it wouldn't be worth it to the end user).
I think that you feel that the cost of maintenance of slightly used equipment, cars or computers, is much, much higher than it really is and this is throwing off your perception of value.
In a lot of 100 computers, you are unlikely to have to do anything more than replace one full unit (motherboard died) and maybe 15 - 20% of hard drives during a seven to ten year lease cycle. Maybe one stick of memory or something else odd. But very, very little. You build in the cost of the drives and you replace with bulk purchased, well planned out, low cost SSDs that last for effectively forever. Sure, there is some cost there, but very little. When planned accordingly that cost and risk is spread out over many, many machines and the lower cost of bulk buying combined with improved planning allows you to make the entire process predictable and affordable.
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@Dashrender said:
which is it? common or not, your example specifically says "people leas a NEW car." Once it's traded it, it's off lease. I've never heard of used cars being available for lease. (I figured because the cost maintenance wouldn't be worth it for either the leasing company or the leasing company would have to pad the cost so much to ensure they were covered, it wouldn't be worth it to the end user).
Common enough. Here is a consumer reports article on the subject.
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/2012/12/used-car-leasing/index.htmI specifically stated that the new car gets traded back in and sometime goes out to auction/sale but other times goes back on lease. Thus used car on lease.
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I think that you will find that lots of used car dealers will offer leases if you ask. It is just another way for them to monetize.
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@scottalanmiller said:
I think that you will find that lots of used car dealers will offer leases if you ask. It is just another way for them to monetize.
I'm not in that market, so I definitely admit ignorance.
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I rarely lease because I have crazy complex driving patterns. Although now I am getting closer and closer to simply not owning cars at all.
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Just my $0.02 - if you're in a situation with more than 100 computers to lease, get new ones, roll them every 3 to 4 years.
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Warranty is really up to you and will probably be dictated by your business case. If it's under 100 absolutely avoid warranty. Over 100 and it can save you a lot of running around and headaches, but it'll cost you more money (to a point, don't forget to factor in your time, storing parts, replacing them, etc etc).
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@MattSpeller said:
Just my $0.02 - if you're in a situation with more than 100 computers to lease, get new ones, roll them every 3 to 4 years.
But is that not based on the assumption that you can get new ones at the right value? What if you, like 90% of businesses, don't have any real value to new but would get better value from used?
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@scottalanmiller ..... what? You've totally and completely lost me. Used? Seriously? Under what circumstances?
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@MattSpeller said:
@scottalanmiller ..... what? You've totally and completely lost me. Used? Seriously? Under what circumstances?
That 90% of office workers don't need the flashiest more up-to-date models... most could probably get away with an older pentium and 4 gigs of RAM with an SSD attached it it.
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I feel bad re-deploying someone's crust-ified & nasty 2 year old laptop
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@MattSpeller said:
I feel bad re-deploying someone's crust-ified & nasty 2 year old laptop
Uggh... Laptops are a different matter, at least for me.
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@MattSpeller said:
@scottalanmiller ..... what? You've totally and completely lost me. Used? Seriously? Under what circumstances?
Most. Why would you buy new? The premium that you pay is incredible and what benefits do you get? It isn't like desktops wear out like a car. What do you perceive as the value for new that makes it worth at least four times the price of used?
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@coliver said:
@MattSpeller said:
@scottalanmiller ..... what? You've totally and completely lost me. Used? Seriously? Under what circumstances?
That 90% of office workers don't need the flashiest more up-to-date models... most could probably get away with an older pentium and 4 gigs of RAM with an SSD attached it it.
What is amazing is how it seems half of all businesses only deploy new and don't realize that no one needs that. And the other half, in the SMB at least, feel that employees are worthless and won't give them basic tools to do their jobs. So Pentium 4s running Windows XP and 512MB were still to be found last year!!
Buying used is somewhere in the middle. Get better value for everyone, don't waste a fortune on people who don't need it but having good machines for everyone that you feel is worth employing.
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@MattSpeller said:
I feel bad re-deploying someone's crust-ified & nasty 2 year old laptop
Why do you broadly deploy laptops? There are business cases for having laptops, but I see it as pretty rare. You pay extra and get less and the breakage and wear rate is easily twice as fast. There is up front cost, support cost and replacement costs. It adds up quickly.
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If you can build a business case for chasing around after failing hardware and pissing off your users with ancient crap, by all means go for it. Leave me the heck out of it!
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@MattSpeller I don't think he's talking about getting them P3's with 512MB RAM... But does your Receptionist really NEED an Intel i7 with 16GB or RAM?
No? Get her an i3 with 4GB or 8GB of ram and a 256GB SSD drive... Don't have to buy that new.
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@MattSpeller said:
If you can build a business case for chasing around after failing hardware and pissing off your users with ancient crap, by all means go for it. Leave me the heck out of it!
See, this is what I mean. You are using poor purchasing as a reason to not buy used. This is why our customers came through us. They got better than new failure rates because they were getting higher end, better tested gear and there was no ancient crap or unhappy users. Users were thrilled because it allowed small businesses to move into a class of gear they were not spending the money on for new.
Your fears are the REASON to go used, not the reason to avoid it. I feel that you are either buying garbage that fails giving you a bad impression of what good IT gear works like, or you are having bench support issues. What is causing your computers to fail? We don't have those issues even with ten year old boxes.
