IT equipment finance: hire purchase vs leasing vs subscription (2026 UK guide)
Spreading the cost of IT is easy to agree on and surprisingly easy to get wrong, because the four common routes - hire purchase, finance lease, operating lease and technology subscription - behave ver…
The 2026 memory & SSD price surge: a UK buyer's survival guide
If a server quote you signed off six months ago now looks 40% higher, you are not imagining it. The AI build-out has turned memory and flash into the most squeezed components in the data centre: DRAM …
What size UPS do I need? A UK sizing guide (2026)
Sizing a UPS comes down to four numbers: the watts your kit draws, the VA that implies, the headroom and growth you add, and the runtime you need. Get any one wrong and you either overload the UPS or …
UPS runtime explained: why batteries fade faster under load
Ask “how long will my UPS run?” and the honest answer is “it depends” — on the load, the battery, its age and its temperature. The one thing that is certain is that a battery delivers far less than it…
VA vs watts vs amps: power factor explained for IT
Watts, volt-amps and amps describe the same electricity in three different ways, and the link between them — power factor — is where most UPS and circuit sizing mistakes happen. This guide explains al…
UPS topologies: standby vs line-interactive vs online
UPS come in three topologies — standby, line-interactive and online double-conversion — defined by the IEC 62040-3 standard (VFD, VI and VFI). They differ in how cleanly they protect the load and how …
Server room cooling: how much do you need? (UK guide)
Undersized cooling is one of the most common causes of thermal shutdowns and shortened hardware life in UK server rooms. The good news: the heat you must remove is almost exactly the power your IT dra…
UPS batteries: VRLA vs lithium-ion (UK 2026)
The battery is the part of a UPS that wears out — and the choice between valve-regulated lead-acid (VRLA) and lithium-ion now changes the whole ownership story. Lithium costs more upfront but lasts fa…
Your 2026 VMware renewal: negotiate, re-platform or exit
Two years on from the Broadcom acquisition, the second and third VMware renewals are landing — and the sticker shock has not worn off. Perpetual licences are gone, the catalogue has collapsed into a f…
Windows 10 end of support: ESU vs Windows 11 in 2026 (UK)
Mainstream Windows 10 support ended in October 2025, and the grace of Extended Security Updates only delays the reckoning — at an escalating price. If your fleet still has a tail of Windows 10 devices…
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