Guides for the people who own the refresh decision
Written by practitioners who have run refresh cycles for enterprise fleets: how to decide per device instead of by age, what Windows 10 ESU really costs, how to pull the inventory, and how finance can cut the budget while prioritizing replacement risks.
- Hardware refresh cycle: three, four or five years, and how to decide per deviceThe cycle length debate has a 2026 answer from the benchmarks, and it is less useful than it looks. The better question is which devices in your fleet the rule gets wrong, and your inventory can answer that today.
- How often should businesses replace computers? A per-device answer for 2026Written for the owner or finance lead who has been handed a quote for the whole fleet. The benchmarks give a range and Windows 10 gives a deadline. Four questions per device tell you which machines actually need the money.
- Windows 10 ESU cost in year two and three, and when paying it beats replacingYear two of commercial Windows 10 Extended Security Updates started on 14 October 2026. Here is what each device costs now, what it costs through 2028, which devices get it free, and a per-device rule for ESU against upgrade against replace.
- How to export your device inventory from Intune, step by stepThe All devices export is the file most refresh decisions start from, and it leaves out the two columns people expect. Here is the documented path, what you get, where processor and memory actually live, and how a read-only app reads the same data through Microsoft Graph.
- How to pull hardware inventory from Configuration Manager with read-only SQL viewsConfiguration Manager already holds the hardware inventory a refresh decision needs. This is how to query it through the views Microsoft supports, with one query that returns the columns that matter and the permissions that keep a reporting login read-only.
- Redeploy or replace: how to build a redeploy pool from your own fleetEvery fleet has machines that are too much for their user and seats that are due for exactly that machine. Matching them avoids a purchase at 2026 prices. Here is how to find both sides and run the moves, and how to count the result without overclaiming.
- Right-sizing engineering and GPU workstations: when the next one should be smallerA workstation often stays on the asset register after its user's workload changes, and procurement replaces it with the same class at the next refresh. The evidence usually says something else. Here is how to read it, and how to count the difference without inventing a statistic.
- The real cost of keeping an aging PC, with the numbers that hold upThe most quoted figure about old PCs is a misquote. This guide separates what the studies measured from how they get repeated, and shows how to price the cost of doing nothing from your own service desk data instead.
- How finance can cut a hardware refresh budget and prioritize riskHardware budgets are flat or falling while PC prices rise 17 percent. Written for the CFO and the controller, this guide shows how to cut the line by replacing fewer devices and how to count the saving so it survives audit. It also says where the risk sits.
- PC prices in 2026: why refresh timing matters more than the cycleMemory prices rewrote the PC market this year. The analysts agree on the direction and roughly on the size. For a refresh program the consequence is simple to state: timing and per-device selection now matter more than the cycle length ever did.
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