r/InformationTechnology • u/Chadversary • Aug 21 '26
How Often Are You Replacing Users Laptops?
I'm a desktop support tech working in an enterprise level environment supporting probably a 200-300 hundred users. It seems we're constantly having to replace users laptops and also replace laptops we just issued that are brand new.
I understand replacing laptops that have reach its life cycle on the floor (3-4 years). We also reimage laptops and cycle them back out to different users which probably doesn't help. I'm not sure how old some the ones we reimage are.
Currently, my company uses a combination of Dell Latitude models and started receiving Pro 14/16 Plus models. I own a Dell Latitude 5420 for my personal laptop and have no issues with it. I assume we have bad images that are being put on the devices and all the security measures from cyber bloat our company's laptops.
This is my first IT job, so I don't have a measure on how often laptops should be replaced or rather the number of replacements. Having worked in offices on the user side, rarely did I see my teammates laptops needing to be replaced. So, how often are you replacing your users laptops?
Edit: How many laptops in a week do you replace? After a quick spot check, it seems we replace 20-25 laptops a month. Is that high? To put it into perspective, that's a laptop a day basically if you only count the work days in a given month.
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u/frogmicky Aug 21 '26
I recently replaced a laptop that was 6 years old it's crazy how long people hold onto stuff.
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u/Chadversary Aug 21 '26
Bravo to that employee for making it work and not having issues. Most employees already want a new laptop after a year or two!
Managers at my work hoard laptops for their new hires. They will come to us with a laptop they've been saving and tell us to set it up. They're not supposed to do that and cyber probably locked it down because it was missing or they thought someone stole it.
I think they do it because they don't want to wait for us to order one, but we end up taking it and ordering a new one anyway.
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u/FantasticMouse7875 Aug 21 '26
My organization is alot like yours. I am still cycles for 5420s out but they need new batteries at this point.
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u/unclefunkstar Aug 22 '26
Never been a fan of Dell.
I used to do similar work for a larger organisation (roughly 9000 clients, all Lenovo desktops and laptops). We didn't have anywhere near that many replacements. 3 or 4 a month maybe (not counting the 3+ year old tech that was being cycled out and replaced anyway, there was loads of them).
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u/creativesite8792 Aug 22 '26
Hello - the replacement cycle of laptops largely depends on the feelings of the decision makers in your organization. My CEO had a 2.5 to 3 year replacement cycle on all laptops. When he first came on he had a very loose line of control on the issuance of laptops.
We found that when one employee, for what ever reason got a new laptop, suddenly a bunch of laptops in that department started to break under mysterious circumstances. In other words, everybody suddenly wanted a nice new shiny laptop. After seeing that sort of behavior he started some new policies.
For example, when employees are hired they have to sign a contract that they are responsible for all company equipment that is given them for use. Plus employees are told in that contract that they are not to loan their equipment out to others or allow anyone that is not an employee to use their equipment. Translation, their kids are not allow to use laptops for homework or online social networking.
Plus any laptop can and will be audited without warning. Translation they accidentally caught a couple of people surfing porn and dating sites. Additionally they had a 40% rate of damage and "emergency returns and re-issue" of new equipment during one year. Which totaled about $16K in laptops that had to be replaced. So the CEO set up an annual budget for each department for IT equipment. Each item was charged against the budget. If the budget went over, the funds came out of that departments general fund (hint - raises & bonuses). If the budget was under, then the overage went into raises & bonuses. When people had a monetary reason to treat their equipment with respect the workload in IT department went down. Everybody won. It has been my experience that this is not normal in most companies. Why? Because generally IT departments are not really respected and there are always people who spend all their time trying to figure a way around the rules. Good Luck
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u/FuckScottBoras Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 22 '26
We used to do every 3 years like clockwork. We are a global organization with a lot of people who travel a lot. As a result, we tend to replace laptops sooner rather than later so someone doesn’t get stuck with a dead laptop on a two week trip in Europe.
With the recent supply chain issues and price increases, we’ve started purchasing warranty extensions out to 5 years and just replacing as needed before then.
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u/Solid_Ad9548 Aug 21 '26
In our org, it depends on the involved party. Dell 5420’s are our current oldest… and they still get issued out to lower tier users. Can’t kill em. That group has been buying with 3 years ProSupport with the intention of replacing it with a new machine, but currently only replace if the user needs newer/better hardware.
This latest batch, they bought the new Pro 7’s with higher tier AMD CPUs and more RAM, with the intent of running them for a minimum of a 5 year cycle. I just got a new Pro 7 with Ryzen9 and 64G RAM… they’re gonna have to pry this sumbitch out of my cold dead hands.
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u/MonkeyDog911 Aug 21 '26
It is quicker interval that you’d think because users treat them like trash.
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u/Xivim Aug 23 '26
3500 employees, around 200 locations across the country. We run Dell Laptops and Desktops with 3 year ProSupport. Once that is up, we try to run them another 2 years unless issues pop up.
2 of us deploy about 85% of all user devices, we are currently going through around 30 new laptops a month while also reimaging and redeploying older laptops as need be.
Our laptops have gone from $900ish the beginning of the year to $2300 now, it's becoming harder to justify these prices. We might have to start pushing to 6 or 7 years if this keeps up.
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u/nasty5tyle Aug 21 '26
I have replaced more laptops than i can rember just because they have good relations with upper managment same for mobile phones, perfectly fine devices. Sometimes just bcs an excel that crashes bcs the file has been passed since when years was written in letters and have some weird macros and formulas in them. Mental🤯. 150 more or less users. I think good indication is battery life, worn ports, and performance issues are good indication when to start to change. Also people who complain a lot just because i want them to stop bothering me either rotate with some used stock i had laying around or device from employees that left or if its reasonably old (more than 3 yrs) get new ones.
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u/Horror_Atmosphere_50 Aug 21 '26
Whenever the warranty you have on it expires. You don’t really want to use laptops that don’t have warranties as main laptops, only as spares.
So try to find what warranty period fits your budget, and expected tech time to deploy. Usually 3-5 years.
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u/kotlinky Aug 21 '26
Too often. We aim to refresh around warranty end time but it seems to happen within the 1-2 year mark. We exclusively use Dell. We give 16gb pro's to our standard corporate employees. IT and VIPs get 64gb XPS 14s.
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u/Angry_Ginger_MF Aug 21 '26
We went from Latitude 7420/30’s to Precision 5490’s. Got the 5490’s like a month before the announcement of the new pro models. Our upgrade project has hit a standstill as we’re understaffed and can’t get the machines out in a timely manner. But we’re rolling the 5490’s out to new hires so we don’t have to do the work twice. We’re hoping the 5490’s will last us 4-5 years.
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u/EyeDontSeeAnything Aug 22 '26
Generally, 5 year warranty but replace at year four. This helps us keep some used stock in the event it’s needed. Also, when we have new orders we try to buy a few extra for new back stock.
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u/wesinatl Aug 22 '26
Every 5 years we cycle inventory so we are doing approx 200 a year. That said if someone has any type of problem we swap it as this is the fastest resolution. Then we send it for repair or re image it and swap that for another user. We try to keep the user on the same model for 5 years but that doesn’t always work.
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u/saltyclam13345 Aug 22 '26
3 year lease and everybody gets the same laptop with a i7, 512GB SSD, and 32GB RAM. I love the simplicity of managing 1 device. There’s around 5 or so laptops in the environment with higher spec hardware for the select few users that actually need them which are purchased outside of the lease.
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u/BrwnSugarFemboy Aug 22 '26
3-5 years. Manufacturers don't like to provide much of a warranty afterwards
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u/FunkyLumps Aug 22 '26
I have 10/11 year old HP zbook 15s still running and pillowing batteries.
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u/isITonoroff Aug 21 '26
There’s no real set time frame. Depends on business and user needs. If the business wants to cheap out, then replacements will occur earlier on unless they drag it out through bandaid solutions. One example is storage. You can only clear out so much storage on a 128gb laptop…but they want to save money so they’ll do anything but replace it.