Planning a device replacement cycle before it plans itself
Every company has a replacement cycle. Most have not chosen it — they have inherited one where machines are replaced at the moment they die, usually in the middle of something important.
The real cost of an old laptop
A four-year-old machine does not announce itself as a problem. It shows up as:
- Ten minutes lost every morning to a slow start
- Meetings that begin late because the video call struggles
- An operating system too old to receive security patches
- A battery that has made the machine effectively a desktop
None of those appear in a budget line, which is precisely why they persist.
A cycle worth copying
For most office environments:
- Laptops and desktops — replace at four years, or three for anyone doing design, development or heavy data work
- Servers — five years, with the warranty extended if you intend to keep them longer
- Network equipment — five to seven years, or immediately when the manufacturer ends firmware support
- Phones and tablets — when the vendor stops shipping security updates, whatever the hardware still does
The exact numbers matter less than having them written down.
Make it a budget line, not a decision
Divide the fleet by the cycle length. A forty-machine estate on a four-year cycle means ten machines a year — a fixed, boring, forecastable number. That is the entire point.
Buying ten a year also avoids the trap of replacing everything at once, which creates a cliff you will hit again in four years' time.
What to do with the old ones
Wipe them properly, then donate or resell. A machine too slow for daily work is often perfectly good as a spare, and a shelf with three working spares removes the urgency from every future failure.
We build replacement plans as part of IT consulting.