The days of junking perfectly good kit for want of a new
component could be over. A new service,Spares4It
, promises to make finding replacement parts for your IT inventory
the work of a few keystrokes.
This site aims to boost the useful life of IT equipment, create
economies of scale, and save the nation's landfill sites from more
junked machinery.
Founding director, Rob Embers, got the idea while working at IT
reseller supplier Vision, where he was
constantly asked to source spare parts for everything from servers
to laptops. "When people can't get the spares, it is inevitably
more economical to junk machines and buy new kit. By sourcing the
parts, we can save them money and they can avoid the hassle and
expense of bringing in a new system," said Embers.
At present, the company specialises only in most popular brands,
namely
HP,
IBM,
Lenovo and
Dell. "We want to encourage people to use their existing
infrastructure as long as possible," explained Embers. "For most
kit, the useful life is around five years, but the warranty is for
three. After that you are at the mercy of suppliers, who might
charge you a fortune for a replacement hard disk. We know how to
source parts cheaply."
Though the range of brands is limited, the product portfolio
extends from first-generation servers to modern laptops. They even
boast a supply of
IBM Token
Ring networking products.
Recently the National Audit Office criticised the government for
junking IT equipment too early, which it claimed costs tax payers
around £70 million.
UK businesses need support on green IT >>
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