Kitting Out Office and IT Equipment

mickeymouse303

My Brother owns his own small business and after a few hard years it's starting to get off the ground. He's moved into a new office but he needs to kit it out with more laptops, servers, routers etc.

Even though his company is starting to grow he still has a tight budget. My friend shared a link with me on Facebook about refurbished servers so we've started looking at refurbished products.

From what I've read so far, we should make sure everything is fully tested and we get warranty.

Has anyone else kitted out an office with refurbished equipment?

tacpot12

I've not kitted an office with refurbished IT equipment - I've always bought new. I have bought secondhand servers off eBay for self-training.

Secondhand equipment can be very good value for money, but be aware that spare parts may already be harder to come by. I would suggest you get a couple of spare power supplies and a spare server chassis that cannibalised for other spare parts such as the motherboard.

Standardise on one chassis to further increase the maintainability of the server estate.

Secondhand UPS can also be very good value but if I were building a server room on a budget I would buy two UPS (each rated to supply all the critical load) and fit new batteries into one of them.

Air conditioning and ventilation are also very important for reliability.

Owain_Moneysaver

You're better getting refurbished commercial-grade equipment that will last rather than shiny new consumer stuff that won't, and spares are more available for the high-value stuff.

My IBM laser printer ran for about 10 years (It was £1000 reduced from £3000!)

Try Morgan Computers or Microdream.co.uk for PCs.

Especially for servers, energy costs and air-con requirements can be higher for older kit.

paddyrg

"Should I buy a secondhand car?" - it's one of those questions where the answer will vary a lot with the details.

I would exercise caution as older kit may be closer to death - stuff really does wear out. Beware of laptops where the keyboards are shiny or letters worn off - they can be high mileage for instance. Capacitors age and dry out so strange intermittent faults can arise. Connectors can have taken a few knocks so lead to other strange intermittent faults. Connectivity will be naturally more limited than more modern units, discs smaller and more worn, etc.

I'm all for reuse and recycling, just it's hard to know if you're buying good or rubbish kit. Perhaps a cheap lease from the vendor would be better so you don't have to pay for disposal and maintenance is their problem, not yours.