Approaching big corporations for their old IT stuff?

[dgsmith]

Has anyone ever done this? I saw something not long ago that sometimes if you approach for instance a bank, they may be able to give you their relatively new desktops (seeing as their replacement policy is ridicolously short in some cases). Has anyone ever tried or know anything about doing this? Is it even at all likely the big corporations will even consider doing this, even if the school did press releases etc providing publicity?

As well as trying to find bid/grant funding, we need to be looking at other ways to upgrade our hardware and this crossed my mind as a possibility, but not if there isn't a cats chance in hell! Doesn't help I wouldn't have a clue where to start, who to contact etc..

[elsiegee40]

You will find replacement cycles are lengthening in the current economic climate... However, it's worth a try. My school recently acquired 20 good spec XP Pro desktops from a city finance firm. They won't take Win7, but they're better than the kit that was being nursed to replacement next year!

[witch]

Are there any well-known companies with their head-offices where you are? We found that the companies based in the area were more likely to give us either old computers or indeed match fundraising monies which was very useful. It is very good publicity for them and doesnt cost them much in the grand scheme of things.
Do some research - find out who the chief exec or MD or whatever is and get your head to write them a letter. You never know!

[jimmy_2k]

I haven't seen this one being done for years. I know some schools used to get computers from local businesses and one leading highstreet bank but I know when people became more aware of the DPA hard drives were often stripped out and as the schools didn't have the money to buy new drives the computers were essentially worthless. Then the WEEE directive came in and organisations decided to stick with disposal agents. Then again it can't hurt to ask, also consider contacting a local university or college.

[hit]

Have you tried your LA? Ours has a mailing list you can subscribe to for retired equipment. I recently got 30 dell Optiplex (GX620 IIRC) PC's with KB/mouse/monitors and a HP DL360 G5 server all in good condition, just needed a good cleaning. All came from an adult education centre.

[FN-GM]

It depends on how you run things. Most companies will only get rid of machines that are out of warranty and are like 5 years old, for example Dell GX620, 745, 755. For us these would be no good.

[jimmy_2k]

GX745's are good machines for the school office but then again if its for stuff like Kudo (games programming software) and anything that needs to render 3D then its not worth it. I know some people would now start suggesting thin clients.

[FN-GM]

GX745's are good machines for the school office but then again if its for stuff like Kudo (games programming software) and anything that needs to render 3D then its not worth it. I know some people would now start suggesting thin clients.

They are old though and should be retired. We are getting rid of some machines here at a similar spec.

[dgsmith]

Thanks for the replies; I can understand most big corps will be scaling down their replacement cycles so perhaps machines that are 3yrs old rather than 1.5/2.. heck even 4yrs old will be better than our oldest, at 7yrs.

Unfortunately, we're based in a small village town surrounded mostly by farms(!) so there aren't any big inner cities close by or indeed HQs of big companies. biggest building is the Tesco built a few years ago

Our LA tends to offer their old equipment but never for free, and always over 5yrs which is no use to us at all. Really anything older than 3yrs isn't worth taking, though we'd stretch to 4yrs probably.

I'm not a big Dell fan anyway.. too unreliable, but then the 745/755s are core 2 capable/equipped and as we still have P4s, these would still be welcomed but my main query was how to go about approaching companies. Our last disposal a few weeks back had a chap come straight from another school and had piles of Dell 745 CMTs in the van.. I felt like asking him to do a swap, as at worst they'd have been Pentium D!

[Steve21]

Thanks for the replies; I can understand most big corps will be scaling down their replacement cycles so perhaps machines that are 3yrs old rather than 1.5/2.. heck even 4yrs old will be better than our oldest, at 7yrs.

My only worry would be surely they'll have the same issues that parents/teachers get when asking for old school computers.

Can't give them out with harddrives etc due to personal information.
Can't get any licenses etc etc.

Which a lot of the time makes it easier just to dump them, rather than spend time "cleaning" them?

Guess it depends on the individual companies, but something to keep in mind

Steve

[dgsmith]

My only worry would be surely they'll have the same issues that parents/teachers get when asking for old school computers.

Can't give them out with harddrives etc due to personal information.
Can't get any licenses etc etc.

Which a lot of the time makes it easier just to dump them, rather than spend time "cleaning" them?

Guess it depends on the individual companies, but something to keep in mind

Steve

Well it's cheap enough to buy HDDs on ebay if the machines cost buttons or nothing. Also helps our old P4s already have 80GB sata drives which can be utilised as a stop gap, so in that sense we can avoid an obstacle.

Problems really is where, or how to start a querying process..