RE: [SAGE] RE: Lease v. Buy

["Gilbert Wilson" <gilbert@watchhouse.org>]

Michael (and others),

Since your with Motorola, and I assume leasing hundreds of systems (at
least), the economies of scale certainly way in your favor.

But lets say you suddenly became an such an idealist that you left your
corporate job, and became the sys admin for a small non-profit of 15
employees working to stop the spread of WMD.  You now have a
stitched-together computer infrastructure of Windows 9x - XP systems with no
rhyme-or-reason, in addition, you have two servers to support employee
activities.  Do you choose to start fresh with leased equipment (a new start
all-at-once), or do you attempt to cobble things together through
purchase/maintenance over a four-five year period?  Why would you choose one
over the other?  In making your decision lets say you have somewhere between
4-6k a year at your command, and the CFO wants a depreciation schedule.

Thanks again!

Gil

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-sage-members@usenix.org [mailto:owner-sage-members@usenix.org]
On Behalf Of Brown Michael-EMB021
Sent: Monday, May 09, 2005 11:03 AM
To: sage-members@sage.org
Subject: [SAGE] RE: Lease v. Buy

>-----Original Message-----
>From:  Behalf Of Gilbert Wilson
>  
>I'm curious as to what advice people have on leasing computer equipment
verses buying it.  Specifically, good v. >bad v. ugly?  What do people have
to say on this issue?

We lease at my site.  We found its cheaper to do so.  It has other advantage
of being a way to ensure 'technology refresh', that we don't have systems
still being used with outdated OSs and hardware because they were purchased.
When systems are going off lease, we get replacement systems that many times
have new, more reliable hardware, and newer OSs.  (we many use Windows-based
systems.  Great way to ensure we still don't have NT4 systems still being
used. :) )

Most of our leases are for 3 years (servers, workstations), laptops are now
2 1/2 years.

Michael Brown
Motorola, Inc
SAGE member