How Often Does Your Company Replace its used Computers?
Many companies replace their employees’ computers at fixed intervals – once every second, third or fourth year. But how often should your company’s used computers actually be replaced? And how much is a used computer worth?
A number of factors contribute to determining when is the optimum time to replace your used computers:
- The sales price of used equipment
- The level of support costs during the service life of the product
- The employees’ efficiency
- Security
- Environmental friendliness
- Replacement costs
1. Sales price:
It is certainly possible to sell used computers. And it will be particularly easy for you if you sell to a refurbisher like Tier1Asset – in particular, if it is a matter of at least 25 devices. When there is a large number of computers, the income per computer will be higher, because the transport and administration expenses can be distributed among a larger number of devices.
The price of a used computer depends on, among other things, its age, processor, hard drive, RAM, wear and cosmetic appearance. As a rule, we give all the way up to 38 % of the initial price for a two-year-old notebook and up to 21 % of the initial price for a model that is three years old.
Under all circumstances, we would love to come, take a look at your aging computers and make you an offer. It is normally possible to renovate and resell 90 % of the used computers. The rest can be used for spare parts or end up in the landfill.
2. Support costs:
Studies clearly indicate that it is cheaper to service a completely new computer rather than a model that is several years old. The graph on the left shows the how the price falls the older a computer gets.
3. Efficiency:
Once a computer has been used for several years, it can easily get slower because of the multitude of data and programs that are saved on its hard drive. Needless to say, this is at the expense of the employees’ efficiency. You do not need to waste so many working hours and days when replacing your computers would be a good deal in itself.
Moreover, new programs require higher computing power. However, the development is going towards more and more cloud computing, which does not place so extensive requirements for computer power. Here it is more important to have a good network connection.
4. Security:
Out of consideration for, among other things, the GDPR legislation, you cannot just leave a used computer at your local waste recycling station without purging the hard drive very thoroughly first. You must, therefore, spend your own time erasing data and disposing of your used equipment. Or pay someone else to do it for you. Read our guide to Used Computers with Sensitive Person Data. Guide to How You get GDPR ready.
If you, on the other hand, opt to use a refurbisher like Tier1Asset, they will do the entire work for you in a very secure and well-documented manner so you do not risk painting yourself into a corner with regard to the legislation or your internal regulations.
5. Environmental friendliness:
If a computer is refurbished rather than tossed into the landfill after 3 or 4 years of use, the environment is spared between 145 and 195 kg of CO2 (source: http://reutilizayevitaco2.aeress.org/en/). This corresponds to the amount that can be absorbed by around 8,000 trees over the course of one day.
All other things being equal, the longer a computer is used before a new one is purchased, the less the CO2 emissions will be. But it hardly plays such a big role in the overall environmental accounting whether it is an employee in your own company or a buyer outside it that, so to speak, completely wears down a certain computer.
6. Replacement costs:
All other things being equal, the replacement of computers will require an input from your IT managers and employees. It will be necessary to install new programs and set up networks and security. With the spread of cloud computing, there are, in general, fewer programs that need to be installed on the computer and more and more that are used in the cloud. And this will contribute to reducing the replacement costs in many companies.
How often are the computers in your used company replaced?
Please do not hesitate to contact us if you need advice on when the right time will be for replacing your company’s computers with new ones.