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Depreciated PCs

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by cruffin

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As with everyone else involved in purchasing pc's for the company I'm building an inventory of pc's no longer suited for business use. As new pc's are installed users ask what's being done with the older ones. At this point nothing. Many users have asked if they can "have" or purchase the unused pc's, and I've been advised to determine a "fair market value" and offer the pc's at that price.
Does anyone have a comment, or a way to determine fair market value?
Thanks!

11 replies

by james r linn

One, if you do sell to employees, you want to make sure they understand that they are sold without warranty, or with a limited one. Make sure they understand that there is no support from your desktop support group.

Also understand that if you really want to be secure, you should throw out the HD. Many people have access to tools, like Norton, which can be used to get data back from drives where data is erased, and in some cases back from drives that were formatted.

In terms of setting fair market value, walk into a used computer store and get some prices. Note that name brands sell for a premium at a used store - people feel more comfortable when they can go to a website and download a manual.

You can decide if you want to sellthem for what the used computer store would buy them from you at, or what they would retail them at.

James

by ebob

Not relevant!

The "value" the company needs to get out of these boxes is NOT the FMV, but the value showing on their own books. Most orgs depreciate PCs across 3 to 5 years. If the box is older than that, the "value" (to the org) is ZILCH! So anything you get after that is "gravy".

Here's what I've done:
1 - scrub the HDDs, configs, whatever
2 - in writing, whoever takes it away, takes it away - no warranty, no support, no nothing (thanks very much)
3a - I prefer to give it all to a charity. if there's anything unusable, they have contacts in the recycling business who can keep the heavy metals out of the landfill (and out of my drinking water)
3b - or I hold some sort of lottery or auction for employees and donate the cash raised to the org's favourite charity

by amgc36

As the owner of a computer store, I have a pile of old hardware, working and not working, in my storage room. Once in a while we do a clean up and we put old parts in working condition on sale.

We determine the price of the by finding out the actual retail price of the item when it was new. Then we divide that amount by the age of the item in years. Then take a percentage off that price depending on the condition of the item.

For example, a 2GB hard drive costs around $200 when it was new six years ago. Divide $200 by 6 you get $33. If the drive is in a poor condition, then take at least 50% off that price, making it around $16.

If you have a system to sell, simply use that formula for each of the items in the machine, and you'll get the "fair market price".

Hope this helps.

by malcolm r

If you sell the old PCs to employees, they will always be coming back to you for technical support. No matter how many times you tell them the PCs were sold "as-is" and no support will be provided, they will still be asking you questions and complaining to you of problems. BTDT, won't do it again.

Donate them to a charitable organization. Its good PR for your company, and you won't have to deal with those old PCs again.

Malcolm

by tbragsda

Simply don?t do it. I, as I?m sure many others, am appalled by the waste I have seen working with large, and small, co. One large bank I worked for had a warehouse that gathered ?decommissioned? PC/Printers etc., loaded them pallets, and PAYED to have them removed!

The problem is with cost of redistributing, upgrading etc. It just doesn?t make sense for the people making financial decisions. It costs less to buy a new box, and get it out on the desktops, than redistributing old but useful equipment.

With that said, why not sell? Well I have talked with many in the CFO set that will give a ton of reasons. I can only offer the tech point of view. Your support staff WILL get calls. You will be expected to provide some level of initial support. It will cost money for techs to reformat hard drives, insure working PC, etc. It is a losing proposition.

Give it away? Well I have been down that road too. Many needy organizations could make good use of this stuff we call trash. I have been flat out told not to give this equipment to charities. Some sort of liability. Where is the liability? No clue. Talk to the lawyers. Your trying to do a noble dead, and all you end up doing is wasting your time.

Give it away? That?s the ticket. Now you have problems of which users get what, and still the calls to the help desk, and the time to clean HDs etc.

Sorry to post such negative comments, but it is something that has galled me for years. I?m with a much smaller co now. I put stuff ?in the dumpster? and it disappears faster than the sunsets, if you get my drift.

by smullster

I agree with tbragsda... Put it by the dumpster (packaged nicely in a box). Chances are it won't be there when you turn back around. NOTE: Write zeros to your drives before disposing of your equipment this way. :)

by starbull

Writing zero's to the drive isn't enough . . . If information on a "formated" drive gets recovered and leaked or sold to competitors or news agencies, you could pay for the mistake with your job. You need to erase the drive to Department of Defense (DOD) standards to make it absolutely unrecoverable even by forensics. This means writing "1" to every sector on the drive, followed by writing "0" to every sector on the drive, and then repeating this process 7 times.

But the good news is that there are many free programs which will do this for you.

by tucson_man

Again, I am sad to say, "ITs THE MANAGEMENT".

As someone that works with a charatable organization and a bank I have seen two extreems.

The bank still has pre Y2K PCs as well as the last couple of generations piled up on desk gathering dust because they have had executive direction not to give then away because of the data they might contain.

On the other hand, most of the pcs we have received are from a military site. Their PC control department had the disk scrubbed/erased and then donated the pcs. That's fine, I would rather start with a clean pc any.

It obviously can't be a technology issue if one won't let anything go and another has no problem .
Again - It's the management.

by Member 25088450

As we upgrade and remove our old 133/166 Mhz computers we hold an employee lottery. Select how many machines you have to go and set a price. We sell the CPU, keyboard and mouse for $25.00. Get a list of employees who want a computer for thier children or whatever. Have someone (not you or anyone in the lottery) to pull the names. All computers should be stripped of applications except OS. (Legal note)

good luck

by clearsmashdrop

Im currently putting together our 3rd sale of surplus equipment to folks inside the computer. You will make more money selling it to them than to a liquidator. HOWEVER!

1) Sell only the PC with a base OS. No extra software.
2) Expect there to always be one whiney, SOB, who despite numerous warnings that all sales are final will expect his money back 3 weeks later.
3) We gave everyone 48 hours to test their stuff, which worked out great. Except for who know who in item #2.
4) Get a receit. Someone accidently gave us 20 extra dollars and it caused a big stink when he
wanted to return his printer. ( Guess who? )
5) Make it clear there is no support for these PC's. Expect they will call anyway.
6) Record all serial numbers and tags on outgoing equipment to prevent and future problems.
7) Make the price fair to employees. Not so cheap its a giveaway. But not so much its better to go buy a new computer.

by rev. ned

If your at a loss as where to put them [old pc's], I'm always in need of recycled parts to put in recycled other things for usable puters for kids. I'm not an organization, or anything like that, I'm just a minister that likes to build cheap puters for kids. Mostly, I do not give them on-line capabilities, and always format twice.

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