I use an old laptop working for a charity – shall I buy my own hardware?

Mon uses a 10-year-old computer and a seven-year-old BlackBerry at work. Old tech is slowing her down, and she wants to upgrade to something better

I work for a charity and they do not upgrade equipment very often: I am using a 10-year-old laptop and a seven-year-old BlackBerry. I feel this old tech is slowing me down and affecting my work, so I am thinking of buying my own hardware. I own an iPhone, and I could dedicate this to work. I also have a Windows 8 laptop at home.

The iPhone won't easily upload photos to a laptop unless I buy more iCloud storage, which I am loath to do when I have ample storage on the laptop.

It's a false economy to skimp on laptops because they can easily waste far more time than they are worth. If you work 250 days per year, then a 400 computer costs 40p per day, or 5p per hour, if spread over four years. For a worker paid 10 per hour, 5p is equivalent to 18 seconds. I'm pretty sure that an hour with a stopwatch - your iPhone has one - will show that your old PC is costing your employer more than 18 seconds per hour in lost productivity. Just accessing two or three web pages could do it, without even a crash/reboot.