Leasing IT equipment - worth it or not
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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.
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@dafyre I agree 100%, but that's what the boxes that are the oldest on the lease are for.
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@MattSpeller said:
@dafyre I agree 100%, but that's what the boxes that are the oldest on the lease are for.
As part of the lease program that we had had, when a box fell down a "tier" they had the option to either pay less and let it go to a lower tier saving them a few dollars a month or they could opt for a "new" box that was at the old tier as a "free upgrade." So for the fixed, predictable price they could keep "up to date" always being a few years behind new.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@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.
I've always moved them to loaner laptops/Admin conference laptops. For say like conference rooms or if someone does a presentation or something that doesn't have a laptop. Usually the only people who get laptops are IT, and some management who need portability. Most users don't need a laptop and they cost a lot more for less. If I would re-deploy them I usually order the $20 aftermarket replacement keyboards if they are nasty... There are some dirty end users out there.
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And in case you think I'm crazy, we used the same gear internally. Success rates were great. Support was a breeze because every tech knew the gear inside and out and we were aware of what failures were likely, how to monitor, had replacements ready. The service quality was way above what people would normally get with new gear.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
I've always moved them to loaner laptops/Admin conference laptops. For say like conference rooms or if someone does a presentation or something that doesn't have a laptop. Usually the only people who get laptops are IT, and some management who need portability. Most users don't need a laptop and they cost a lot more for less. If I would re-deploy them I usually order the $20 aftermarket replacement keyboards if they are nasty... There are some dirty end users out there.
Ditto what we do here. I wish I could get away without a laptop, I hate lugging the stupid thing around like it's my leash.
Nearly 100% of my users are portable & work from more than one location. I suggested hot desking with desktop stations but it never really caught on.
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@MattSpeller said:
Nearly 100% of my users are portable & work from more than one location. I suggested hot desking with desktop stations but it never really caught on.
So they lug laptops around everywhere? Layers and layers of problems
Why do they want to carry everything with them all of the time?And why do you do it?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@MattSpeller said:
Nearly 100% of my users are portable & work from more than one location. I suggested hot desking with desktop stations but it never really caught on.
So they lug laptops around everywhere? Layers and layers of problems
Why do they want to carry everything with them all of the time?And why do you do it?
lol my problems can be discussed in another thread if you really want (I'm ok with not for right now hehe)
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When I first started here full time, we needed about 20 new machines and I did buy them used at an auction house. They all came with Windows XP 2 GB RAM and we used them from 2007 until summer of 2014, so we definitely go our money's worth out of them.
I'm definitely more on board with the thinking of MattSpeller - I don't like deploying crusty old crap - the prettiest dressed up pig is still a pig and even though it shouldn't matter the users, they new the computers weren't new and whined about it for a short while before they just forgot about it.
I did manage one heck of a deal on the previous set of laptops we deployed. HP 530, 550 series laptops. Purchased in Jan 2008 and of the 30 purchased 22 were still being used (although super slow machines) when I retired them in spring 2014.
I did purchase almost all new equipment on the last round, last spring 2014 and I expect to get at least 7 years out of most of them. 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.
Originally I was thinking the thing that would drive me to replace them again would be that Windows 7 was retiring, but now that all Windows 7 should get a free upgrade to Windows 10, that pushes the possible use out to something like 2025. The computers would be 11 years old then...
