Financing Computers for Business? 36
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."
Dude..your gettin a .... (Score:2, Interesting)
I am the question originator (Score:3, Interesting)
I work for a training company. I'm solely responsible for, at the moment, about 150 non-uniform beige boxes in five different locations. The company only has five full-time employees, but a horde of part-timers. I am the IT department. Just me. Everyone else teaches non-technical classes or has an administrative role. Maintaining 150 random beige boxes, mostly with super-cheap generic motherboards, is exactly as nightmarish as it sounds. Ghost helps a lot but can't fix everything.
I've gotten approval to purchase 60 PCs over the next month, but we're a small business and this is a decidedly large-scale endevour for us (I understand that the PCs we now have were purchased maybe three or four at a time, on a cash basis). I'm completely re-building our network infrastructure - putting in 802.11b and laptops for the full-timers, actual 100Mbit everywhere (and Cisco hardware for my classes), setting up a couple of file servers and dedicated internet access at the remote sites.
That's the plan, at least.
The down side of this is that I have no earthly idea how to properly evaluate financing options vs. leasing vs. paying for equipment outright, and since I've never personally done purchasing for anything NEAR that much equipment, I don't want to be subject to the whims of the salesdroids I'm going to be talking to in a couple of weeks.
To anyone who replies, I thank you very much for your thoughts.
Even used, Dells are good (Score:4, Interesting)
What I really like about them is the "no tools" cases. I can flip up/open just about everything just by releasing latches. I wish the cabling was longer, but they've been good for me.