Matthouse

Corporate laptops: Fix or Replace?

My coworker Peter sent me this link to computerworld. It’s about a study conducted about the cost of replacing laptops after 3 years (which is usually the amortization schedule for computer equipment), or stretching their use out to 4 or even 5 years.  It’s an interesting article, and makes some good points.

There’s two basic categories of computer (or for that matter any technology) purchases.  One school of thought is to get the cheapest available that will do what you need, because it will either break or become obsolete soon anyway, and you can just replace it when necessary.  This is the category in which most consumers fall — spending as little as a few hundred dollars on a new computer every 12 to 24 months.  The other school of thought is to spend the most you can afford now, and buy the warranty to protect your investment for a longer term.  Generally this means you buy a higher end system, hoping it will still be usable in 3 to 5 years.  This is usually the direction the corporate IT guru leans.

There’s benifits to both.  By getting something somewhat less expensive, but more often, you’re likely to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to “the latest thing”, especially when it comes to software and operating systems.  You’re likely to experience a speedup with each new system, although I might argue some of that is because you’re starting anew, without all the cruft that accumulates after years of using the same computer (un-used software, possibly spyware, viruses, etc).

The Computerworld article points to the cost of fixing computers versus replacing them.  My argument is simple — use it until you have a problem, and then either replace it or fix it, depending on which is more cost effective.

To all of my corporate IT friends, what do you think?