You get what you pay for. And that’s no different when it comes to IT. However, things have changed somewhat over the last five to ten years.
It wasn’t that long ago that you needed to buy the most expensive IT hardware you could afford because the performance would be out of date so quickly. According to Moore’s Law, computing power doubles every year to eighteen months.
In the last five years, the requirement for more power for everyday office and home use has virtually ground to a halt, yet processor performance has continued to increase at the same rate.
Manufacturers have responded to this drop in performance requirements by building cheaper and cheaper systems based around basic processors. However, they haven’t just cut their costs with cheaper processors. While you can currently buy a new system for £300 to £450 which will meet your performance requirements, this system is likely to start falling apart after a couple of years.
We always recommend our clients buy top brands, such as Dell, HP and Lenovo. We also advise them to buy from that brand’s business range. These quality systems do come at a price, normally £550 to £1,000.
And there’s the problem for many of our clients. You want the quality and reliability of the expensive systems but don’t need the latest performance. You also don’t want to spend upwards of £1,000. So what can you do?
This is where refurbished systems really stand head and shoulders above new cheaper options. These ex-corporate systems are from the expensive business ranges which offer high performance, quality and reliability but are just a few years old. They still have their higher quality and reliability but, with a few years under their belt, now come into the same price range as cheap new systems, often even lower. It’s also worth bearing in mind that refurbished systems can normally still offer higher performance than the cheap new models.
