A second life, with warranty
Not everything written off is worn out. A four-year-old laptop with a new battery and an SSD is a perfectly good device for a reception desk, an intern or a loan pool. That is not romance but arithmetic: it saves money and it saves a purchase that would otherwise land in this year’s budget.
What it involves
Four things that happen
Refurbishment is more than dusting off and handing out again.
- Testing and gradingBattery, screen, keyboard, ports and storage are checked. What fails the test goes to parts or to recycling, and not to a user after all.
- Repair and upgradeA battery, an SSD or added memory. This is where the gain sits: the two parts that wear most are also the two cheapest to replace.
- Wiping and rebuildingThe drive is wiped by a recognised method and the device comes back with the standard build on it. A device returning from another department must not bring remnants along.
- Warranty on itA refurbished device without warranty is a gamble. What we deliver back comes with a term on it, because otherwise the risk only moves from the budget to the service desk.
Where it pays and where it does not
Three situations, three answers
Reuse is not always the cheapest answer and we say so.
- Where it paysWorkplaces with a light load: reception, till, loan pool, temporary staff, a second device for home. Here a refurbished device is almost always the better sum.
- Where it is doubtfulA permanent employee working on it all day. An hour of waiting a week costs more than the difference in purchase price, and that hour goes unnoticed because it is booked nowhere.
- Where it does not payEquipment that no longer receives the new version of the operating system. That is not cheap but a false economy: it gets replaced within a year anyway and sits in the network without updates meanwhile.
What belongs with this
Reuse is the step before disposal.
Work out what reuse delivers
Send a list of what is being written off, with age and model. You get back what is worth a second round and what is better disposed of.
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