Most small companies have no computer replacement schedule. A laptop is replaced when it dies, when the screen cracks, or when a new hire starts and there is nothing to give them. The purchase is unplanned, rushed, and usually made at retail price by whoever is nearest a store.
That is the most expensive way to run a fleet of computers, and it is the default at most companies between 10 and 100 people. The fix is not complicated. It is a number, a schedule, and a decision about how to pay.
How long a computer should last
We advise four years for a laptop and five for a desktop. Three things wear out at about that pace.
The battery. Apple’s own battery page says a MacBook battery is designed to retain up to 80% of its original capacity at 1,000 complete charge cycles. A laptop charged most working days gets through that in about four years, and Windows laptop batteries age the same way. After that the machine lives on its charger, which defeats the point of a laptop.
The warranty. Business laptops typically ship with one to three years of coverage, and the vendors sell extensions at purchase that take it to five. A repair after the warranty ends costs a meaningful share of a new machine, and the parts stop being available at all eventually. Apple, for example, stops all hardware service on a product more than seven years after it was last sold, and parts for anything between five and seven years old depend on availability.
The operating system. Windows 10 stopped getting security updates on October 14, 2025, and Windows 11 requires a TPM 2.0 security chip and a supported processor, which in practice rules out most PCs built before about 2019. Our Windows 10 end-of-support guide covers what to do with the machines that cannot move. On the Mac side, Apple said in June 2025 that macOS 26 is the last version for Intel-based Macs, so an Intel MacBook has at most a couple of years of security updates left.
The refresh budget, in one line
Count your computers and their ages. Then divide by four. That is how many you replace each year, and a business-class laptop at roughly $1,000 to $1,800 at list price gives you the number to put in the budget.
For a 30-person company, that is seven or eight laptops a year, somewhere between $8,000 and $14,000, every year. It is not a project. It is a line item, like rent. The companies that get this wrong are not the ones spending too much; they are the ones who spend nothing for five years and then need 30 machines at once. Replace the oldest quarter each year and nobody is ever on a six-year-old laptop, and no single year carries the whole bill.
Lease or buy: the honest math
Every major vendor will lease you computers on a monthly payment, often bundled with support and a return at the end of the term. The pitch is predictable cost and no large outlay.
Do the division. A $1,500 laptop over a 36-month lease is $42 a month before any interest or service fee. If the quoted payment is $55, the extra $13 a month, about $470 over the term, is what you are paying for the financing and whatever support is bundled. That may be worth it, but you should know the number.
Know what happens at the end. Some leases let you buy the machine for a nominal amount, which makes the lease a loan in disguise. Others require the hardware back, in working condition, on a date. Late returns and damage charges are where leasing gets expensive, and the person who signed the lease is often gone by the time it ends.
The tax treatment is different, not better. When you buy, Section 179 lets a business expense the full cost of equipment in the year it is placed in service. For tax years beginning in 2026 the limit is $2,560,000, per the IRS revenue procedure published in October 2025, which is far above any small company’s computer spend. Separately, 100% bonus depreciation applies to qualifying property acquired after January 19, 2025. A lease payment is generally deductible as an expense instead. Your accountant decides which treatment applies and whether your lease counts as a purchase.
Scale matters. Leasing programs are built for fleets of hundreds. At 20 or 40 machines, the service fee buys little that a good IT provider does not already do.
Our position: buy, pay for a warranty that matches the four years you plan to keep the machine, and budget the refresh as a fixed annual line. Lease when cash matters more than total cost, or when a lease is the only way the refresh will happen on schedule. The honest caveat is that a well-run lease beats an unplanned purchase every time; the failure mode is not leasing, it is a lease nobody tracks.
What a well-run computer fleet looks like
- An inventory with ages. Every laptop and desktop, who has it, when it was bought, and when its warranty ends. If nobody can produce this list, start here.
- A replacement age, written down. Four years for laptops, five for desktops, and a rule for exceptions.
- A fixed annual budget. The oldest quarter of the fleet, every year, approved in advance.
- One standard machine. One or two models, so support, spares, and setup are repeatable.
- Warranty that matches the plan. Buy the coverage for the years you intend to keep the machine, not the default.
- A disposal step. Old machines wiped before they are resold, recycled, or handed down.
Where you stand, in two questions
- How old is the oldest computer someone at your company uses every day? If the answer is a guess, the inventory is the first job.
- Who decides when a computer gets replaced, and is it a plan or a breakdown?
Hardware approaching end of life is part of the quarterly review we run under managed IT, and hardware passes through at our cost, so the refresh is a plan rather than a surprise. If nobody at your company owns this today, start a conversation and we will tell you where you stand.