That's easy: "To replace the computer will cost X dollars." Don't break it out for them. Just give the FINAL price.
That's the thing! I don't know the final price, at least not for the most worrying one. Because a new server will mean a new software package, too... see...
(deep breath)...
The accounting software we currently use to write checks and pay our bills and balance our books is super old. It's on an old compaq proliant 500-something, running pentium 3 xeons and has maybe 1 gig of ram. That's PC-100 ECC SDRAM. The software itself is a dos program written into a wrapper that makes it work on old windows systems - XP at best, but I think the server is running 2000.
I say "I think" because I can't actually log into the system. All the info and most of the login credentials sailed off into the sunset about 8 years ago with the guy who initially set it up when he got west nile virus and was hospitalized for a year then had to retire because he was too weak to come back to work. Yes, really. He's super old. Maybe, MAYBE I can track him down but god knows if he'll be any help at this point.
Anyway, even the client for this software doesn't like any windows newer than XP. I tried for weeks to get it to work on 7 but it was a no-go, and the tech support from the company (Marketron) that
bought the company (Wicks Broadcast Solutions)that bought
the company (CBSI) that produced this software is unsurprisingly unhelpful, being as this software was pretty much finally, completely discontinued around 10 years or so ago, just before the most recent acquisition. My workaround thus far has been to nurse along an old XP machine left over from a salesperson who outgrew it that I completely wiped and is running nothing but XP, remote desktop, and the accounting software client. The accountants each have to RDP into THAT machine to start the client that connects to the server which keeps our books and lets us print checks (on a LaserJet 4 more yellowed than my grandma's teeth).
And if that whole setup already wasn't kludgy as hell, the server (The P3 xeon compaq I told you about) has slowly been losing parts over the last 10 years. Sure, it started with just a case fan here and there, the occasional hard drive in its RAID... I've managed to keep it running by scrounging replacement parts off ebay and other distribution sources of antiquated tech, and it's a testament to the quality of the damn thing that it's been kicking for easily 20 years (it's my understanding it was already used when they got it!), but it's reaching the point where we can't replace the parts any more. Half the case fans are dying or dead and they're built into these wierd metal modules to direct the airflow that I've had little to no luck in taking apart (previously have replaced the entire module, fan and all), and even the hard drives are starting to go - one went a few years ago, and another is starting to show trouble (in what I guess is a 4-disk RAID-1). It's making distressing noises. The thing is on its last legs.
Buuuuut...
1) I don't know if I can actually successfully log into it, I have user credentials that let me get the client into the shares it needs on the server but I don't know if it's an admin login for the machine in general
2) Even if I can log into it, I don't know how to export our accounting data out of it at all, which may even be moot because
3) I have no idea what software package we would be "moving" to, nor even the slightest inkling of where to start looking or what is important to have in it or how much it would even cost.
So, even a ballpark figure at this point is problematic.