Anyone Here Lease Macs for Their Business?

[ohsnaphappy]

My wife and I own Snap Happy Photography and we have three Macs, two fully loaded 27" iMacs and a fully loaded MBP.

I would say every 2-3 years or so we sell our Macs and buy new ones, mostly out of excitement, not necessity haha! But it also makes sense because our Apple Care is running out.

So it kind of works like this. Buy an iMac for let's say $2700. Buy Apple Care, something like $125. Upgrade memory to 32GB (I usually don't get Apple's RAM) for something like $150. By the time we're done, it's around $3000. 2-3 years later we sell them used for around $1800. $1200 loss plus the hassle of trying to sell them. Now basically multiply that by three, for the other iMac and MBP. Approximately $9000 invested over a 2-3 year period and a loss of approximately $3600.

So when I look at all that I wonder if leasing makes sense. Anyone have any real numbers, or approximate numbers, I could expect to pay if I leased three Macs?

Thanks so much!

 

[campyguy]

Cool business name - I like it!

I run a small engineering/construction management business that owns about 15 Macs and a few PCs. I don't have "numbers" for you, however, I stopped leasing two fiscal years ago - I also buy AC or a warranty and tend to sell before the warranty is up, but found that leasing isn't the panacea it used to be for small businesses, so we're buying new Macs, with a caveat...

The last several Macs we bought were either new Macs that were just superseded by a refreshed model or direct from Apple's Refurbished Store (such as the late-2013 2.6GHz/16GB/1TB rMBP I'm typing this post on now and bought a year ago, or the 2012 2.3GHz/4GB/2x1TB Mini Server I bought a few months ago). AC was purchased from Amazon at a deep discount over Apple's prices, as was the RAM for the Mini.

I'm spending a bit more on buying over leasing if I were buying straight retail, but shopping around and being ready to buy "last year's new Mac" or a refurb Mac has really cut that hit down when it comes time to sell. I also look to discount sites like Slickdeals to monitor price cuts and coupon deals. IMO we're done with leasing computer hardware and peripherals unless there's significant change in tax law. Good luck!

 

[Consultant]

Ever look at leasing cars? If there are companies leasing computers you are probably looking at similar terms (which is not great).

You don't need to upgrade every 2 to 3 years. You can mitigate the risk if you have the correct backup process.

The amount you described seemed too high. No need to buy top of the line. iMac starts at $1100. With 27" iMac starting $1800.

As mentioned, to save some money you can buy refurb. Same warranty, except you save good amount of money upfront.