acquiring computer hardware

1)Purchase at a good price and get the warranty

2)Lease and you pay more,but get support for hardware while under lease

3)Rent- You pay for the harware 4 times,abel to trade up would be an option that I would look for

At our studio, we are using over 200 computers, and we stop buying, because some brand new computers have parts that are of low quality, so we start building our own. We hire one pro guy that do nothing but built using good quality parts. It really works. Cheaper in the long run. And we reuse some parts wich makes it more cheaper. But if your are only a small office that needs few computers, just buy, cheaper than rental, but make sure some of you knows how to troubleshoot.

we run 4 servers and 58 workstations and build our own. We used to have a an outside vendor [HP/Dell] provide our computers but found the tech support terrible, the maintenance/warranty contracts costly and we had downtime. With build in house our uptime went from 94% to 99% and MTBF on componets and computers is virtually nill.

That uptime and MTBF offsets the costs between outsourcing IT and maintaining it in house where inhouse IT is more profitable.

You are asking a question that has many different answers depending on the situation. Rental is usually only good for a piece of equipment needed for a short time.
For most corporations, leasing is the best way. You can include equipment refresh at intervals (usually 2-3 years) so that you do not get stuck with obsolete technology. Also include the service contract. This usually results in the optimum TCO (total cost of ownership).
Large ticket items like mainframes can be purchased with some creative financing and you can realize some accounting perks, depreciation and the like. But you still have to have a service contract.
If you have the manpower to maintain or build the hardware already on board, then things may change a bit. But if you already had them, you wouldn't be asking the question.
You don't state what your needs are, used might work and lower the TCO. Also didn't state corprate use or home use. I buy for home, lease for corprate.

Hi,

I would say that this is a question for your accountant.
In the great land of Oz downunder, there are significant tax advantages in rental and leasing, even though they do cost more, due to interest.

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