Apple Product Blog from Hardsoft Computers

HardSoft have recently designed several flexible lease and long term hire options that cater for the larger corporate business to allow a large scale flexible deployment  (200+) of Apple iPad 2’s in an organisation.

Based on a HardSoft Master Lease arrangement;  committing to a minimum of  25 Apple iPads in a single year you can draw them down in any quantity you see fit, whether it be 20 for your sales department or a single iPad  for the head of HR;  it doesn’t matter. This system also gives the flexibility of authorising up to 10 personnel the ability to place orders meaning that once the lease is set up; management will not need to get involved again. There are no admin fees and no further direct debits to sign.

This lease also gives you the ability to return the equipment between 12 and 24 months for a one off payment of £55+vat but no further rentals. If they are sent back to be upgraded to new equipment the charge doesn’t apply. This gives you the flexibility to manage your IT but also to quickly adapt if a new iPad product is released or your user’s needs change. HardSoft will also arrange the delivery and collection of the iPads from anywhere in Europe.

Apple iPads are also available on our more traditional 2 or 3 year leases with ownership and renewal options with great prices and low end of term payments. All ipads include all risks Insurance and three years warranty. Options are available for a ‘collect and swap’ warranty and this can be extended for up to 5 years.  As an Authorised Apple iPad Reseller and over 25 years experience in IT leasing and finance; HardSoft Computers have the ability to tailor lease options which allow you to deliver and sustain Apple  iPad deployment in the best and efficient way possible. For enquiries please email steve@hardsoft.co.uk who will be happy to arrange a quote or meeting to discuss your needs.

HardSoft have today(20/2/12) announced discounts on the iPad hire and leasing For two or more there is now a 2% discount and 5% for 12 or more units. For greater quantities then further discount on iPad hire and leasing are available.

is available …But beware the offer on the Apple Store (operated by Apple Financial Services) is  NOT ZERO…To keep it at the end up you have to pay a FAIR MARKET VALUE . A Mac retains its resale value like no other computer so the  fee at the end of the 24 months could be as much as 30% of the original cost. HardSoft offer a genuine 0% finance lease.

On a new £2000 Apple Mac Pro purchased today on an Apple Store zero per cent business lease the monthly rentals will typically be as follows… £2000 spread over24 month is circa £83 per month then fair market price at end is the additional £ 750. So it’s technically £2750 to own the Mac .

HardSoft Computers offer a zero per cent lease amongst our standard 3 year lease and finance options for Apple Macs that are GENUINE 0% financing for business. We dont include flexible upgrade options on the 24 month interest free option for Macs, but at least it’s 0% as you get to keep the kit………..As an example …..iMac 27″ -i7-3.4GHz, with 16gb ram, AppleCare & Microsoft Office 2011 is on the Apple Store at £2181.62 plus VAT. We can offer this over 24 equal payment of £90.90 and you get to keep it at the end of the lease. There are no setup fees on this lease.

Note not all configurations of Apple Mac are available from HardSoft with 0% financing and the offers are only available to businesses established for one years or more. For more details on interest free please make contact.

BLOGGER – PHILIP MORGAN – APPLE PRODUCT PROFESSIONAL

is this week …come along.. After BVE North the annual Broadcast Video Expo moves south to Earls Court. From February 14^th to 16^th over 300 companies including HardSoft, will be showcasing their products alongside an extensive program of free seminars. Come and see us on Stand G9a and meet some of the team. As usual HardSoft will be there explaining how our leasing can benefit those in fast-moving tech heavy industry. Leasing makes the unaffodable very affordable.

With the recent advent of Thunderbolt from Apple there will be a greater focus on data storage at our stand this year. Lacie have very kindly lent us some kit to show you; firstly the Lacie 2big Thunderbolt series. Offering both 4TB and 6TB options at 327MB/S and RAID capabilities all in a sleek design you wouldn’t mind having on your desk. Pricing will be announced shortly and will of course be available on our flexi lease options.  We will also be showing the 5big range; featuring storage sizes ranging from 2TB to 15TB and interfaces from USB to dual Gigabit Ethernet the 5big is a great option as a backup or extra storage space on your network.  Prices start from  £4.20+VAT per week on a 3 year flexible lease.

Another product which is due any day now is the Sonnet Fusion D800TBR5. An 8 bay RAID 5 desktop system it is the first true competitor to the Promise Pegasus range. Again offering superfast Thunderbolt technology (800MB/S) the Sonnet boasts two Thunderbolt ports allowing you to daisy chain up to six devices. Available in 8TB, 16TB and 24TB options backed by a 5 year warranty as standard the Sonnet is a piece of equipment we are seriously looking forward to.

We will of course be showing our normal Apple Macs,  JVC Professional camera- all available to lease.  So come see us from 9.30-18.00 on Tuesday 14^th and Wednesday 15^th and until 16.30 on Thursday 16^th at Earls Court 2, stand G9a. Email steve@hardsoft.co.uk for your free ticket.

We Blog a fair bit here at HardSoft about Leasing high value Mac equipment especially Apple  iMacs and Mac Pro’s, one machine often overlooked in all of this is the Mac mini. So what is it, what makes it a great product?

For one the Mac mini is not only a smart compact design (would you expect anything else from Apple ? ) but it ships without any extras meaningyou can use your existing Keyboard, Mouse and Monitor. Or it allows a custom solution of your peripherals.  (It doesn’t come with a keyboard or mouse) It has wireless, Bluetooth, HDMI, SD Card Slot and Thunderbolt offering a truly large array of ports. It amazingly only has a foot print of  just 7.7” x 7.7” and they fit a power supply into this small unit to save having the brick attached to your power cord too.

So I hear you say “Surely this tiny box can’t be that powerful? It must come up short on spec” – That just isn’t the case with options for i5 or i7 processors and AMD Radeon 6630M Graphics it can easily tick all boxes for anyone doing their Day to Day work with a little bit of Graphics work thrown in for good measure. For those of you with Environmental concerns Mac mini is also the most energy efficient Desktop available drawing less than 13watts when idle.

Possibly the most exciting part of all this is the Server configuration, by sacrificing the DVDRW (this product is compatible with Air Drive so no great loss) you get 2 x 500GB HDD’s (larger (750GB) and faster SSD drives can be fitted)  offering you redundancy for your data and thanks to the Thunderbolt port adding a Promise Pegasus (Also available on 3 year flexible lease) or a Lacie 2Big. It makes this a formidable and fast storage system. All of course comes complete with the inclusion of Lion Server with unlimited client licenses. With i7 CPU the Mac mini Server challenges the old Xserve and the neglected Mac Pro server. We can offer the Mac mini with 16Gb Ram for an extra £1.50 per week on the 3 year lease including warranty.

With prices starting from £4.60 + VAT per week on lease for the i5-2.3Ghz, including 3 years warranty; it is safe to say this is not the Ginger step child of the Apple family but a genuinely hard working affordable option.  For enquiries email ryan@hardsoft.co.uk – A Certified Apple Product Professional. HardSoft are an Authorised Apple Reseller.

You may not know but over the last year or two but HardSoft Computers  have actively been making IT leasing available to businesses in Ireland and Scandinavia. This was supported with the launch of our Irish Website www.hardsoft.ie .

To Irish customers the offerings are almost identical to those available in the UK with the exception of the payment is in Euros (arranged via a Dublin office). HardSoft are an Authorised Apple Reseller for Ireland.   If you are interested to see what we can offer you standard online ordering can be done and you can contact us info@hardsoft.ie for all your Apple needs.

For anyone in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands then we can lease Apple Macs to businesses with little issue at all as long as you are an established company with 2 years trading history. The Lease warranty still works the same with us covering costs of collection, repair and return under the terms of your Lease.  Or you can go to your local Apple Store as all Macs have a worldwide warranty. We can have Keyboards changed to suit national requirement  at no extra costso we are well positioned to handle most concerns you might have from sourcing your new Apple kit from a UK Reseller.

European but not in Eire or Scandinavia – then contact sales@hardsoft.co.uk with your nationality and we will research the possibilities of leasing to your country.

We are proud to start this year as an Authorised Apple iPad Reseller . Though we have been offering them since launch this new status means more support from Apple for HardSoft and in real terms better leasing terms to businesses. Discounts on two or more iPads is now available.

An Apple iPad 2 Lease from HardSoft Computers includes a full 3 year warranty and comprehensive insurance cover, which covers you from loss, theft and accidental damage. So whether you drop it on the floor or spill a glass of water on it, you are covered. Arguably the best tablet computer on the market at this current moment in time, with its high-tech specs and features such as iCloud, FaceTime and HD video recording, could the iPad 2 be the future of portable computing?

As an Apple iPad Authorised Reseller, the Apple iPad 2 is available on a Flexi-Lease from HardSoft Computers.The iPad 2 is available on the same Flexi-Lease as all other Apple Mac equipment, with the 2 year RETURN, RETAIN, RENEW option. Just to detail the reality of our flexibility, after 24 months you can RETURN the equipment and cancel the agreement. You can also RENEW into a new lease; we will contact you and offer you the Mac at a similar rental cost. You can RETAIN the equipment at the expiry of the lease for a one off fee of £1 to pay.

HardSoft Computers can also offer the iPad 2 on a shorter lease term. For example, you can take a 1 year lease on the iPad 2, and just return it at the expiry of the lease; it’s as simple as that. With all options available and starting at only £4.55 per week (including warranty and insurance), please give us a call on 01279 718 693. Discounts start for 2 or more units.

At HardSoft we offer more…As STANDARD on all Apple Macs leased from HardSoft we provide a three year warranty inclusive of all parts and labour. If your Mac is faulty we offer, at no cost,  a ‘Collect and Return’  service; whereby our courier will be sent in the next day after reporting a fault and will return this to us for repair. This has an average turnaround back to you of 4-5 days. Also included is telephone support and we offer a remote diagnosis and fault repair service. The normal Apple warranty is just one year and Apple offer ‘AppleCare‘ as an extra option. AppleCare is not as good as our Standard warranty and we can offer even more …

If you need more uptime then we have a Loan Mac option should yours be needed to returned to ourselves for repair. As long as we know by 4pm  we can ship a loan unit for next day delivery. The faulty Apple  Mac will be collected on the same ‘collect & return’ basis as our standard warranty. Alternatively you can collect a loan Mac from us or one of our branches and drop yours off. This option is available at just 80 pence extra per week on a three year lease.

If you want to extend these three year warranty option then we offer FIVE year ‘collect and return’ warranty as well.  The warranty can be transferred to another party should you sell the Mac after the lease finishes.

HardSoft have been established for over 25 years  and have a team of both internal and field engineers and offer enhanced warranty options. All engineers are trained and regularly attend Apple certification courses. (In the first two months of this year we will be taking over 70 Apple exams and numerous Apple technical courses ! ) HardSoft engineers are available for ad-hoc visits for training and support services should you need help.

Also available at extra cost is an all inclusive Insurance against accidental damage and theft  with worldwide cover. A worrying truth is that over

10% of all laptops will be stolen within its lifetime. Our all- inclusive policy carries zero excess to pay and is backed by Aegis Insurance. Claims are handled by ourselves and there is minimal paperwork to process a speedy claim.

Most Business insurance policies have a maximum claim for a computer – for which the higher values on Macs usually exceed.

Please email info@hardsoft.co.uk for our full policy details or how to lease your next Apple Mac with all the advantages not just of a better warranty but also of flexibility , cash flow, tax etc etc etc.

At HardSoft Computers we pride ourselves on the flexibility of our Lease Packages and ability to accommodate the needs of our customers even when those needs aren’t always something your average Lease Company would be comfortable providing.

As is common in the industry finance funders can be uncomfortable leasing more Software than 20% of the total value of an order meaning you can’t always get every user in your office the latest Mac or PC with the most up to date design software.

At HardSoft thanks to the special relationship we share with our funders we can offer at least 50% software leasing for New starts, Sole Traders and Partnerships, allowing you to ensure every one of your new Apple  iMac’s, Servers or PC’s  can be leased with its very own copy of Adobe CS5.5 Design Premium for example. Its £9.50 per week on a three year lease. It’s not just a ‘ boxed ‘ product we can lease but also software licensing as well. Microsoft MOLP licensing is available for any Microsoft software including Windows Server.

To take this further if you are a 3 Year trading company there is a good chance we can offer you a 100% Software lease, so if those Quark xPress and Adobe Licenses just aren’t in the budget for 2012 but a new project dictates you have it call us today about Software leasing and see how we can help.

HardSoft Computers are Approved Resellers of Adobe, Quark, Nemetschek (Vectorworks), Microsoft, Kerio, Apple , Sophos and Avid to name but a few…HardSoft are a one stop shop for the supply and leasing of your new software. Not sure if we provide what you are looking for email ryan@hardsoft.co.uk

Apple’s high spec goliath, the Mac Pro, has not had a spec upgrade now for nigh on 18 months. This has meant some reluctant creative professionals have looked elsewhere in the Apple line up to satisfy a need for speed. As such the 27” iMac with a 3.4GHz i7 processer, is our most popular leased iMac.

Identifying this HardSoft have looked for ways to improve the spec  further above and beyond what else is available on the market. With the advent of 8GB Ram Chips the iMac is now capable of supporting 32GB Ram, adding just £2.95 + VAT per week to our three year flexi- lease….who is missing the Mac Pro now?  These options are not on the Apple Store.

What about an SSD coupled with your traditional hard drive. Hardsoft offer the option of a traditional 512GB SSD for just £5.95 +VAT per week on our 3 year lease. Also available is the Seagate Momentus Hybrid XT drive as a boot option with a 2TB SATA second drive. However that’s not all HardSoft also offer the superfast OWC Mercury Enterprise Pro 6G solid state drives which offer read/write speeds exceeding 500MB/s; the range starts at 50GB for £4.70 + VAT per week going up to 400GB at £15.80 + VAT at per week on  lease. At those prices they aren’t cheap but there is no other SSD or hard drive available on the market that come close to those speeds…… Basically we can offer several alternative paths to the Apple Store to get more speed on the Apple 27”- i7-3.4GHz iMac.

Also available is the Graphics upgrade on the iMac to 2GB. As an Authorized Apple Reseller , HardSoft Computers are happy to lease you an Apple Mac Pro or an i7-3.4GHz iMac, but now you know that it’s not just spec which should guide your choice….Such is the popularity of these bespoke 27” iMacs that we are keeping them as stock and can confidently quote a 3-4 day delivery.

Available as an additional cost option is now an upgrade of our 3 year warranty to include a  ’Loan Apple Mac’ option. The normal HardSoft warranty when leasing an Apple Mac is a three year ‘collect and return’ service that is inclusive of all parts and labour. For customers who cannot afford any downtime for an additional 80 pence per week on a three year lease we will ship a loan Mac for next business day delivery – providing we can identify it as broken before 3pm. We will pick up the faulty Mac at your convenience either when we deliver the loan Mac or we can leave it for a few days should you want to try and transfer any data .

Also available as part of our lease options on Apple Macs is an option for an upgrade of the standard 3 years to Five years with the Loan Mac option at an additional £1.95 per week. This upgraded warranty is transferable should you sell your Apple Mac after the lease has finished. Note that for faulty iMacs we will be providing as a loan unit an Apple 17″ MacBook Pro with 8GB Ram. Loan Apple Macs will come with Office 2011 for Mac and Windows 7 Pro configured under Boot Camp and a 30 day use version of Adobe CS5.5 Design Premium – which is also available to lease incidentally.

If you need further details on this new Mac warranty option when leasing an Apple Mac then please contact us.HardSoft Computers has been established since 1984 and are an Apple Authorised Reseller that specialises in leasing of the entire range of Apple Macs, software and third party options over a three year period with flexible finance upgrades available. Insurance against damage/theft is also available on all Apple Macs.