[OPLINTECH] Ever buy refurbished computers from TechSoup?

[Joe Knueven]

I've purchased refurbished/used computers for the libraries I've worked at several times over the years, increasingly for the purposes Matthew highlighted in his reply.  (most recently, I purchased 12 used laptops in late 2019 for a mobile computer lab that the staff used for training during an ILS migration in January of this year, for instance).  

Chad's point about the specs is very important.  For instances, there have been times when I've purchased used computers that were 3-6 years old and I would do some cheap upgrades that would increase their usability and useful life (like swapping out the hard drives, upgrading the memory and putting a fresh install of whatever OS you want on it).  If you don't have the time/skills/motivation to do those upgrades there is likely a local computer shop either in your community or towards the nearest larger city who can.  



For examples, those laptops I bought late last year were purchased from a small computer shop in suburban Dayton (Lenovo Thinkpad T540s, 4th gen i5, 8GB of probably DDR3 or DDR3L, 120GB SSD, fresh install of Win10 pro by the shop) and cost $180 each.   



Even with them getting used more by staff for remote work/zoom calling during the pandemic, I expect to get several years out of them as public programming computers.  



So, yes, it's very do-able, but watch the spec and plan to/pay to have appropriately reconditioned. 



Have a good day.



Joe



PS full disclosure, with new computers and the breakdown of Moore's law, I tend to look for a 7+ year replacement cycle with a mid-cycle refresh of things like SSDs and memory, so I'm more willing than most to roll the dice that one or two of them will have components fail before I replace the fleet of units..







---- On Fri, 04 Dec 2020 12:20:54 -0500 Matthew Kinsey via OPLINTECH <oplintech at lists.oplin.org> wrote ----



I have purchased a couple personally for hobby applications but have not used them at work. In my opinion, in a library they would be best suited for diskless kiosks, digital signage and occasional-use classrooms. Depending on usage patterns and software demands, used might be OK for general public use but I would only entertain that as an austerity measure. At our system we try to adhere to a rolling 4-year refresh cycle and buy new so I usually have some of my own "refurbished" units on hand.



Matthew Kinsey, IT Coordinator, Guernsey County District Public Library














-- 

Joe Knueven, Director

Wilmington Public Library

268 N South Street

Wilmington, OH 45177

937-382-6165 x101 (direct)

937-382-2417 (public)
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