Financing Computers for Business?

Mercutio asks: "OK, I've been handed the responsibility of acting like a grown-up and changing from my normal day-to-day IT job to actually making decisions involving someone else's money. Specifically, I've been asked to deal with all the variables associated with purchasing/leasing computer equipment (desktops, laptops, printers etc) and I'm feeling a bit out of my league. Anyone have any tips for dealing with leasing or financing equipment, companies to avoid working with, or mistakes made in past leasing/purchasing arrangements? Any company that was really great to work with? Any help is of course appreciated. Thanks."

[Obvious] The image variable [/Obvious]

[Strange Ranger]

Whatever you do, standardize the initial hardware config and image and get the vendor to load it. Also include everything you have a site license for in that image, then add user specific software/hardware. Sounds like an obvious no-brainer but it's AMAZING how many places I've seen that shop for cheapest price all the time and end up supporting dozens if not hundreds of different hardware configurations, different software versions, etc. What a mess. In the end, Total Cost of Ownership is far cheaper when you can manage a very homogenous environment. Ghosting out images whenever you have a serious desktop problem is wonderful. So is unpacking the PC right at the users cube and having it already imaged. You can allot a maximum time for desktop troubleshooting.. say 10 minutes.. past that it gets blasted with new image, done. No-Brainer. Over time one or two images for desktops and one or two for laptops will become impossible unless you have a small company, but keep it under control and you'll be a hero.

Get an Accountant.....

[jsimon12]

To be honest just get an accountant (it may cost a little up front but could save you thousands down the road), they will know exactly what you want for a lease or purchase and will be able to tailor it for you tax/financial purposes. A good accountant can make the difference between owing more tax and not.

Service, recourse and support get a Dell

[awerg]

The most important thing is who are you going to call when something breaks. The money is already spent and there is no tomorrow. Go with a proven company that has a commitment to service and support. (I have found that the best was Dell) I have run 50+ user machine shops for call centers and other operations.

The two most important things are hardware warrantee and rescue disks. The key is to standardize the hardware so you do not have to keep lots of different drivers.

-- Hardware --
Who do you call when a power supply fails or a video card flakes? Dell will give you onsite repairs for just a little more. It is worth it.

If the whole lot is crap then you have some leverage to return all the machines and make them pay you. They will not want to do this. They will make it good, whatever thier cost.

-- Software --
Use the standard rescue disk to setup the first one, add your changes then ghost the image. Burn the image to a CD for recovery, network recovery or put it on a usb drive, like pockey http://www.pocketec.net/. Recovery disks are your friend!

As far as the Service goes, HP sucks. Compaq used to be good for servers, but HP will cause this to blowup. IBM is out of the PC business. No-one should use a Gateway for business. Sony's are built for home and you cannot order them direct so you would end up with a few different configurations. The rest are no name imports.

Get a Dell and make them give you a personal business contact.