Top Document: SGI hardware Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Previous Document: -4- Where can I get used SGI machines? Next Document: -6- What about my IRIS 2000 or 3000? See reader questions & answers on this topic! - Help others by sharing your knowledge Thanks to Thomas Sippel-Dau <cmaae47@imperial.ac.uk> for this summary: Since computer technology has been improving so rapidly, this is difficult to answer generally. But you can take the following approches to get somewhere near a realistic estimate. 1. The Book Value. This assumes the computer is an investment object which is written down over a certain time. At the end of this time it is assumed that the residual value will pay for scrapping the object, so you do not have to pay someone to take it away. About 5 years seems reasonable for computers. Value the current value Price the original price n the age of the machine in months p depreciation rate 1.6% (for 62.5 months useful life) 1.1 Linear method: Value = Price * ( 1 - n * p ) 1.2 Degressive method: Value = Price * ( 1 - 2 * p ) ** n In the first 4 years the degressive method will give lower values. Once the degressive monthly depreciation is lower than the linear one, you should sell the machine and buy a new one, otherwise you pay more tax than you need to (talk to your accountants first, they should know the exact depreciation rate and method). 2. Comparative method. Get the new price of a similar current machine. Multiply the current price by any usefulness multipliers. For example: An Indigo R3000 server costs $8000 (N.B. NOT the real price) An Iris 4D/25 is about half the speed of it Then the current value of the 4D/25 cannot be more than $4000 regardless of what the book value says. For this you must strip or enhance the machine to a current standard. Say you take the price of an Indigo with 432 disk Mbyte and 16 Mbyte memory to assess the residual value of a 4D/25 with eight Mbyte memory and 330 Mbyte hard disk. You will arrive at the price after you have upgraded the the 4D/25 to 16 Mbyte. Since both machines are not very useful (stand alone) with so little disk space, you can allow for the difference in disk space when you calculate the price of the whole running system. For this method the old system must be able to run current software usefully. A system that does not run current software has no value, but see below. You should also take account of the maintenance cost for about three years, which is when a system you buy now would be due for replacement according to the book value method. 3. Components and options. You can view the system as an assembly of useful parts, such as monitor, keyboard, disk drives, system box, electronics module. If you have extra memory or disks (over and above the currently useful minimum), you can value them at about 80% of the price you currently have to pay third party suppliers. 4. Residual use value. If you can find a dedicated use for an old general purpose machine, then this could give you a final number. However, you need to allow for any work you have to put in to get to that state, and to keep the system there. You will also find that only reasonably large organisations have such dedicated uses. Finally, a word about maintenance: If you have one system only, and you cannot afford to lose it, you need to take maintenance, regardless of how much it is. From about 5 systems you can save yourself maintenance if you can afford to lose the odd system and load its uses onto the remaining ones. But remember that rescheduling people often meets resistance, and keeping people idle because of a system failure is extremely expensive. See also David Dennis <david@amazing.com>'s "Buying Old SGI Systems FAQ", cited in the misc FAQ. User Contributions:Top Document: SGI hardware Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Previous Document: -4- Where can I get used SGI machines? Next Document: -6- What about my IRIS 2000 or 3000? Single Page [ Usenet FAQs | Web FAQs | Documents | RFC Index ] Send corrections/additions to the FAQ Maintainer: sgi-faq@viz.tamu.edu (The SGI FAQ group)
Last Update March 27 2014 @ 02:12 PM
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