The refurbs are decent enough, although our company steers clear of laptops for commercial reasons, which also seem to born out by the massive amount of laptops on auction sites including Ebay, with 2 year old machines going so cheap, and with many being sold openly for parts and spares only.
This is not restricted to Apple by any means, but for our company where we only take a 2-3 year view on our purchases, we tend to get iMac and of course the Mac mini's which have proved a revelation.
For leasing purposes and education, laptops have too many minuses including battery life, potential for damage and theft, and if you have a class of 35 each with a laptop, they are just not the best tool for the job and indeed the AIO (where I can include Mac mini, as if configured right its out of sight) provide a much better front end for customer services, including hospitals, dentists, and administration facilities.
Same with industry users in office locations customers really want the iMac or larger screen permanent device, where ironically even the Mac mini works for them, and even have a few customers using multi Mac mini arrays.
The majority of office/industry damage is to keyboards and the main culprit being liquid spills, so to swap out a keyboard is much cheaper than replacing a laptop.
If you look at the after market on laptops, the write downs are too large for our business and a quick look on Ebay demonstrates how laptops longevity leave much to be desired and that's where repair comes into the equation, where often Apple is at a disadvantage even for common problems with battery replacement for laptops.
Of course staff of organisations who are hybrid working might use laptops, as do many others, I believe comments that the iMac, Mac mini etc., have no place, are incorrect.
I looked at a site recently where I could pick up a good M1 laptop for $350.... which for users may be good but for our purposes demonstrates the write downs we probably couldn't achieve our business model with and that we are on the right track with our purchasing policy.
No doubt some will have laptops that have lasted this long or that long, but the after market seems to show far more laptops hitting the market than AIO's or even Mac minis. Not knocking the laptop for others, as its horses for courses.
We've found the Mac mini provides a good front end, because you can fit them up out contained within infrastructure if need be, with just a keypad and a monitor to service multiple front end applications. Again where if a keyboard gets damaged, easily rectified.
On the refurb theme though, refurbished iMacs and Mac minis do not seem to have discounts that make them viable, with M1 iMacs and Mac minis often being as expensive as their latest versions.
This is not restricted to Apple by any means, but for our company where we only take a 2-3 year view on our purchases, we tend to get iMac and of course the Mac mini's which have proved a revelation.
For leasing purposes and education, laptops have too many minuses including battery life, potential for damage and theft, and if you have a class of 35 each with a laptop, they are just not the best tool for the job and indeed the AIO (where I can include Mac mini, as if configured right its out of sight) provide a much better front end for customer services, including hospitals, dentists, and administration facilities.
Same with industry users in office locations customers really want the iMac or larger screen permanent device, where ironically even the Mac mini works for them, and even have a few customers using multi Mac mini arrays.
The majority of office/industry damage is to keyboards and the main culprit being liquid spills, so to swap out a keyboard is much cheaper than replacing a laptop.
If you look at the after market on laptops, the write downs are too large for our business and a quick look on Ebay demonstrates how laptops longevity leave much to be desired and that's where repair comes into the equation, where often Apple is at a disadvantage even for common problems with battery replacement for laptops.
Of course staff of organisations who are hybrid working might use laptops, as do many others, I believe comments that the iMac, Mac mini etc., have no place, are incorrect.
I looked at a site recently where I could pick up a good M1 laptop for $350.... which for users may be good but for our purposes demonstrates the write downs we probably couldn't achieve our business model with and that we are on the right track with our purchasing policy.
No doubt some will have laptops that have lasted this long or that long, but the after market seems to show far more laptops hitting the market than AIO's or even Mac minis. Not knocking the laptop for others, as its horses for courses.
We've found the Mac mini provides a good front end, because you can fit them up out contained within infrastructure if need be, with just a keypad and a monitor to service multiple front end applications. Again where if a keyboard gets damaged, easily rectified.
On the refurb theme though, refurbished iMacs and Mac minis do not seem to have discounts that make them viable, with M1 iMacs and Mac minis often being as expensive as their latest versions.
