Each time the Academy replaces a series of laptops according to our refresh cycle, several employees ask if there's any way they could buy the laptop and keep it as their own.

We have given this a fair amount of consideration, looking at process we'd have to step through to prep the device, and the legalities of licensing, from Microsoft (Windows), or Apple (MacOS or iOS).

Unfortunately, it isn’t as simple as it sounds. There are a number of licenses tied to the laptop that belong to the Academy, including the Windows OS (or MacOS) itself. By our own licensing agreements, we are not permitted to sell or transfer that Operating System license to a next owner. If we were able to wipe and install a new transferrable OS on the laptop, you would then also lose everything on the laptop that’s currently on it making it yours. Not to mention, we don’t actually know how to acquire and then provide a transferable OS license to keep us in compliance through the whole process. There may be additional license issues, and other variables that would also come into play, forcing us to strip your personal files and profile from the laptop.

The overhead that we would experience trying to prep and resell the laptops to employees who are interested just isn’t worth it. And the end result wouldn’t be what you have in mind either.

I wish my answer was different. I just talked it all through internally here in my department, and we can’t think of a way to make it happen legally and conveniently.