Algeria AgencyIT consulting & support
Buying IT equipment: what decides is not the spec sheet
Two machines with identical specifications are not worth the same here. What decides is the applicable warranty and the number of different models.
The article on the support family ends on a sentence that governs this page: what decides how long an outage lasts here is not the technician’s speed, it is what is already on a shelf.
That sentence has a purchasing consequence almost no comparison mentions, because it makes no sense in the countries where those comparisons were written: a machine’s value depends on what happens when it fails, not on what is printed on its sheet.
Two machines with identical specifications, bought on the same day at the same price, are therefore not worth the same. The one whose warranty applies in your city is worth markedly more, and the one identical to four others in your estate is worth more still.
This article handles that question, the order in which components actually matter, and an editorial decision: we will put no price on this page, and section 3 says why.
What you buy is not what is on the sheet
A spec sheet describes a machine in its new state, at one moment, outside any consideration of service. It is accurate information and it answers a question that is not yours.
Your question is different: how many days will this machine be unavailable across its five years? The answer depends on three things that appear nowhere on the sheet — where this brand gets repaired, which parts can be found, and how many identical machines you already have.
That is why a comparison written elsewhere misleads here without being false. It compares specifications correctly, in a context where every brand is repaired in three days and every part exists. That context is not yours.
So the useful hierarchy runs in this order: local repairability first, estate homogeneity second, specifications third. It looks counter-intuitive until the first fifteen-day outage.
An immediate consequence: ask your supplier, before the specification, where warranty repair happens for that exact reference, and how long the last one took. They know the answer and it is more decisive than any line on the sheet.
Homogeneity beats specification
The most profitable rule on this page fits in a sentence: ten identical slightly-worse machines beat ten different slightly-better ones. It holds for three cumulative reasons.
The first is parts. In a homogeneous estate, every out-of-service machine becomes a store: a power supply, a disk, a charger, a screen. In a heterogeneous one, a dead machine is waste and every fault restarts a supply delay.
The second is diagnosis time. A fault already seen on one model is recognised in ten minutes on the next; ten different models is ten learning curves, and the supplier bills all of them.
The third is installation. A system image prepared once deploys to every identical machine, which turns a two-hour replacement into a twenty-minute one — and makes it possible to lend out a ready-to-use spare.
The practical rule that follows and that structures a budget: do not buy a machine, buy a model. Decide one model per use — office, mobile, workshop — and stick to it for two or three years even if another looks slightly better along the way.
The warranty that counts is the one that applies here
Not all warranties are the same thing, and the difference is not legal: it is geographic. An international warranty requiring the machine to be sent abroad is, in practice, a warranty you will not use.
Three questions separate a real warranty from a theoretical one. Where does the machine physically get dropped off? Who does the repair — the seller, an approved centre, or nobody? And how long did the last repair on that reference take?
The third is the informative one. A supplier who tracks their own after-sales seriously has the answer; a supplier who does not tells you something useful by not having it, and that beats any promise printed on a box.
What a warranty never covers has to be known too: your data. A machine sent for repair sometimes comes back with a replaced and empty disk, which is entirely in line with the contract. Take the disk out before dropping it off, or make sure of a recent copy.
Finally, keeping the paperwork. Invoice, serial number, date put into service: three items, in the same table as the audit article’s inventory. A warranty with no findable invoice is a warranty that does not exist at the moment it would help.
Why this page carries no price
You arrived here hoping for an order of magnitude, and that is fair. We will give none, and the reason differs from those our other articles have given for refusing a figure.
The problem is not the source, nor the country of origin, nor the age of the data. The problem is the shelf life of the fact: prices and above all hardware availability move here with import authorisations and the exchange rate, at a speed that outruns any page.
A figure written today will be wrong within a quarter. It will nonetheless keep being read for two or three years, and it will be believed — because a written figure looks verified. Publishing a price here means producing a false fact with an invisible manufacture date.
What replaces the price is a method, and a method does not expire. Ask for three quotations on the same day, for the same exact reference, requiring each to state real availability — in local stock, on order, or to be imported — and the corresponding delay.
That third column is what decides, and it is always the missing one. Two quotations a few per cent apart with "in stock" on one side and "four weeks" on the other are not two comparable proposals: they are two different things carrying the same name.
The costs of a workstation nobody counts
A workstation budget is almost always written as the price of the base unit. What surrounds it accounts for a large share of the real comfort and a small share of the spend, which makes it the best place to put money.
The screen comes first and is the most underrated. It lasts twice as long as the machine, it is looked at eight hours a day, and on many desks a second screen produces a bigger daily saving than any processor change.
Keyboard and mouse come next for the same reason: they are the only parts the person touches. They cost little, they get replaced on their own, and a keyboard whose layout does not match what the person learned costs typing errors every day.
The chair and the lighting are not IT and nonetheless decide part of the productivity attributed to IT. We mention them because a director hesitating between two machines often has, at that price, a better use for the difference.
Finally, what we see missing most often: a stand to raise a laptop screen and a separate keyboard for people working all day on a laptop lying flat. It is a tiny purchase and the most profitable in this whole paragraph.
The laptop, and why it costs double
A laptop of equivalent quality costs more than a desktop, which everybody knows, but the real gap is bigger than the listed one, and it gets paid later.
It does not repair the same way: on many models the memory and sometimes the disk are soldered, which removes the cheap upgrade that extends a desktop by three years. A machine that cannot be improved gets replaced sooner.
It breaks more, and not through carelessness: a hinge, a screen, a power connector, a battery losing capacity. Those are the normal faults of a carried object, and two of them cost a large share of a new machine.
It also gets stolen, and it is the only equipment in this pillar for which theft is a routine scenario rather than an exceptional one. That changes the question of disk encryption, which becomes the only real protection once the machine is already in somebody else’s car.
The conclusion is not to give up, it is to choose knowingly: a laptop is justified when the person genuinely works elsewhere, and it is not when it serves as a desktop that goes home in the evening. In that second case a desktop plus remote access costs less and lasts longer.
Disk, memory, processor — in that order
For office use, the order in which components matter is almost exactly the reverse of what a product sheet foregrounds, and that holds for nearly every machine we see.
The disk decides everything experienced as slowness: booting, opening a package, saving a document. A solid-state disk transforms a five-year-old machine more reliably than any other change, for a modest sum.
Memory comes next, and its effect is a threshold rather than a slope: below what the system and the open packages ask for, everything becomes slow at once; above it, adding more has no visible effect. The right level is measured on the actual machine by looking at what is really being used.
The processor decides almost nothing in office use. It becomes decisive again in only three cases: images and video, large calculation spreadsheets, and business software running its own database.
The purchasing rule that follows, valid for most machines: the fastest disk, enough memory as measured, a middling processor. The budget difference goes into the screen, as the previous section says.
Second-hand and refurbished
This subject deserves honest treatment rather than blanket discouragement, because a large share of the small-business estates we see is made of it and it works.
Second-hand business hardware has a real advantage: ranges aimed at companies are built to last beyond their first life, they come apart, and their parts exist in quantity precisely because they were sold in volume.
It has a real drawback, and it is not age: it is the absence of a usable warranty and the unknown wear on the disk and the battery. A second-hand machine without a new disk is a machine whose most fragile component has already lived.
The rule that makes second-hand reasonable sits in three points: a new disk every time, a written warranty from the reseller even a short one, and a single model bought in quantity — which brings section 1 back and turns the constraint into an advantage.
What we advise against is different: second-hand for a server or for network equipment carrying the whole company. The saving there is small relative to the risk, and it is precisely the hardware whose failure stops everybody rather than one person.
The printer: the price is in the consumable
It is the purchase where the mistake is most systematic, because acquisition price and running cost move in opposite directions: the machines cheapest to buy are almost always the dearest to run.
The calculation takes one line and nobody does it: cartridge price divided by the stated page yield, multiplied by your monthly consumption, over three years. Then compare the totals, not the purchase prices.
The result, in nearly every business case, points at a laser machine rather than an inkjet, and at one whose consumables are easily found here. Consumable availability is the real constraint, exactly like the spare part in the rest of this page.
Two details cost dearly and are invisible at purchase. Automatic double-sided printing, whose absence doubles paper consumption without anybody deciding it. And network printing, which avoids a printer attached to one machine — an arrangement that on its own produces a noticeable share of support calls.
Finally, the question that should precede the purchase and is nearly always skipped: how many pages do you actually print a month, and which of them need not be printed. In several businesses, the right answer to "which printer" has been "one fewer".
The power protector, the extension lead and the cable
Three purchases costing a few thousand dinars decide a disproportionate share of reliability, and they are the first removed from a quotation when a total has to come down.
The power protector first, whose real role the infrastructure article explains: giving the machine time to shut down cleanly. One is needed per piece of equipment that writes data — server, storage box, till — and the battery has to be checked, since it dies within a few years signalling nothing.
The extension lead next. Daisy-chained leads are among the commonest findings of our visits, and it is an electrical risk before it is a computing one. One wall socket per heavy item, no lead on a lead, and none of that costs anything.
The network cable last, and it is the most underrated of the three: a cheap cable, crushed under a door or bent for three years, produces intermittent slowness that nobody ever connects to the cable. The page on cabling handles the subject in detail.
The rule common to all three purchases: they are the only items on this page where buying cheapest is a measurable false economy. The extra total is modest and it repays itself at the first fault avoided.
What to require on delivery
A hardware delivery ends badly when it ends with a box left in a corridor. Five things have to be obtained while the supplier is still standing in front of you.
The invoice with serial numbers written on it, not just models. It is the only document that will later tie a specific machine to a specific warranty, and reconstructing it six months on is work nobody does.
The warranty start date, which is not always the purchase date: on some brands it runs from leaving the factory, which can remove several months with nothing indicating it. That gets checked once, with the serial number, in front of the supplier.
The hardware switched on and tested in front of you, including what is not the machine: the network port, every display connector, the card reader if there is one. A defect found at delivery is an exchange; the same defect found three weeks later is a discussion.
And the two things that get forgotten: installation media or licence keys where they exist, and adding the lines to your inventory immediately. Five minutes at delivery replaces half a day of investigation the following year.
What we do, and what we will refuse to do
What we will refuse: recommending a model without saying where it gets repaired under warranty and how long the last repair took. A recommendation that stops at the spec sheet is a recommendation written for another country.
We will refuse to propose an estate made of six different models because each was the best choice on its day. That is how a heterogeneous estate builds itself, nobody ever decided it, and it gets paid for over the following five years.
We will refuse to cost a hardware budget without a real availability column — in stock, on order, to be imported — because without it two close quotations are not comparing the same thing.
What we do: one model per use held for two to three years; the warranty judged by its location rather than its duration; disk before memory before processor, with the difference put into the screen; running cost calculated over three years for any printer; serial numbers written on the invoice and added to your inventory the same day; and the full test performed in front of you at delivery.
And what you can do this week without us: count how many different models make up your current estate. If the number is over half the number of machines, you have just found the main cause of your repair delays, and it only gets corrected at the next purchase.
Frequently asked questions
Which brand should we choose?
The useful question is not the brand but the repair: where the machine gets dropped off under warranty, who repairs it, and how long the last job on that reference took. A serious supplier has all three answers.
Ten identical machines or ten better ones?
Ten identical, almost always. Every out-of-service machine becomes a parts store, a diagnosis already seen is repeated in ten minutes, and a system image prepared once brings a two-hour replacement down to twenty minutes.
Why does this page give no prices?
Because a price written here would be wrong within a quarter and read for three years. Ask instead for three quotations on the same day for the same reference, with a real availability column: in stock, on order, or to be imported.
Where should a workstation budget go?
The fast disk first, enough memory as measured second, the processor last for office use. The difference goes into the screen, the keyboard and a second screen, which are looked at and touched eight hours a day.
Is second-hand hardware a good choice?
Yes on three conditions: a new disk every time, a written warranty from the reseller even a short one, and a single model bought in quantity. We advise against it for a server or network equipment carrying the whole company.
How do we choose a printer?
By working out the running cost over three years — cartridge price divided by stated yield, multiplied by your consumption — rather than the purchase price. Check too that the consumable is easily found here and that double-sided printing is automatic.
Where we come in
How many different models your estate holds, set against the number of desks, decides the next purchase better than any spec-sheet comparison.
- We bring your estate down to one reference per use, kept two to three years.
- We find the nearest authorised workshop for each machine considered.
- We add a real availability column to the budget, not a theoretical one.
A warranty that assumes a trip abroad is not a warranty, and we will say so before you sign.
Read next
Twelve machines bought together grow old together
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The one-third rule settles the easy half. The real question is how many days the machine will be gone, and what the person does meanwhile.The machine you do not repair: wiping, reselling, scrapping
A dead machine leaves the building with its disk. What has to come out first, what it is still worth, and why the cupboard costs more than the skip.
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