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Recession Pushes IT To Find New Value In Old Gear
buzzardsbay writes "Trying to put a bright spin on a gloomy subject, the folks at eWEEK unearth an emerging trend: There's a booming cottage industry of dealers in refurbished computer and networking gear serving folks on the hunt for 'slightly used' and 'new to you' equipment. The dealers selling the stuff tell eWEEK the equipment is practically new, most of it less than a year old, and that the prices for things like servers and routers are lower than they have been since the post dot-com / Sept. 11 days in 2001. Used gear isn't for everybody, obviously. The story points out that while many of these used IT dealers offer configuration services, they don't do installs, and most are not authorized resellers. They do, however, offer decent warranties, so if you can do some of the work yourself, you'll probably be OK."
I am not affiliated with them in any way but I use anysystem.com. The have Sun, IBM, HP and Cisco hardware (systems and parts). They also offer a 1 year warranty on what they sell.
For the past decade, I've been a buyer of lightly used servers like IBM 44P, Dell PowerEdge, etc purchasing these mainly as redundant hardware for existing servers.
In the last year, I have solicited quotes for used equivalents and the price gap has narrowed to the point where new is as cheap as used.
My last purchase of PowerEdge 2900's was actually cheaper through Dell (brand new, 3 yr warranty, etc) than a stripped down 2900 from refurbished vendors.
It seems it's followed car parts in that in the 70's and 80's you could save a lot buying from a salvage yard, but now days you save little or none vs buying from new car part dealers.
I get quotes from multiple vendors so it's not just one company inflating prices.
Just wanted to add that, in my experience, the trend is the opposite of what the article is suggesting.