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The Compass: hardware prices are spiking, the Windows 10 disposal wave is overwhelming ITAD vendors, and compliance walls are closing in
Published
Weekly Roundup · May 18, 2026 · 7 min read
One trend, a few category moves, three reads, one thing to do before the end of the week. That's the Compass, weekly.
This week: Gartner put a number on the memory-cost surge and it's worse than expected, the Windows 10 retirement wave is creating real bottlenecks at ITAD vendors, and European compliance deadlines are producing their first penalties. Meanwhile, shadow AI spend continues to be the thing nobody budgeted for. Let's get into it.
The trend: hardware prices are going up, and your refresh budget is already wrong
We've been tracking hardware pricing pressure since April 13 (DRAM) and May 4 (tariffs). This week, Gartner made it concrete: memory prices are projected to surge 130% by end of 2026, pushing average PC prices up 17%. Dell, HP, Lenovo, Acer, and ASUS have all confirmed price increases in the 15–20% range.
The driver is a convergence of demand-side pressure (AI PCs requiring 32GB+ RAM as baseline, data-center DRAM demand from AI training) and supply constraints (fewer NAND fabs running at capacity after two years of oversupply correction). Global PC shipments are projected to decline 10.4% this year as buyers absorb the sticker shock.
// What this means for your budget
If you submitted a hardware refresh budget last quarter based on Q4 2025 pricing, it's already stale. A $1,000 business laptop in January is $1,150–$1,200 today, and the trend is up. The sub-$500 laptop segment that many teams relied on for basic workstations is projected to shrink significantly by 2028. If you have refresh purchases planned for H2 2026, the case for accelerating procurement is strong — every quarter of delay costs you 3–5% more per unit. Know exactly which devices need replacing, and buy before the next price adjustment.
The teams that can move fastest are the ones that know their fleet cold: device age, warranty status, OS version, condition. If assembling that picture takes a week of spreadsheet wrangling, you'll miss the procurement window. This is the operational case for having current asset data, separate from the compliance case we covered last week.
In the ITAM category this week
A few moves worth noting:
| Vendor / Source | What moved | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Gartner | Published analysis showing 130% memory price surge driving a 17% increase in average PC costs. The report projects a 10.4% decline in global PC shipments as a result. | This isn't speculation anymore — it's in the supply chain. If you're planning hardware purchases for H2, price the order now and lock in if your vendor offers it. Waiting until Q4 could cost your team 5–10% more. |
| Right-to-Repair | Right-to-repair laws took effect January 1 in Colorado, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington. IT teams in these states now have legal access to OEM parts, tools, and repair documentation for eligible devices. | With hardware costs rising, extending device life is suddenly more attractive. These laws give you the legal standing to use third-party parts and independent repair shops. If you're in a covered state and facing a $60K refresh budget, a $200 battery-and-screen refresh on 30 devices that still have usable CPUs is worth modeling. |
| BetterCloud | Published 2026 SaaS management data showing enterprises waste a median of $62.8M annually on unused SaaS licenses. For mid-market companies, the figure scales to roughly $400–$800 per employee per year in wasted software spend. | The SaaS reclamation audit we described in our April 13 issue keeps getting validated by third-party data. For a 100-person team, $40K–$80K in annual waste is a real number. The fix is a quarterly license audit — which requires knowing what you're paying for. |
| NIS2 | First NIS2 penalties issued in Q1 2026, with the directive targeting full compliance by October 2026. Separately, DORA's Register of Information requirement — a mandatory inventory of all ICT third-party contracts — is the hardest requirement for 46% of financial entities. | European compliance is no longer theoretical. If you have EU operations or EU-based customers, NIS2 applies to you. The asset-inventory requirement is explicit: you need a complete, maintained register of IT assets and third-party dependencies. October 2026 is five months away. |
| assetcompass | Shipped a hardware refresh planner that surfaces devices by age, warranty status, OS version, and condition — letting you build a prioritized replacement list in minutes instead of hours. Includes cost modeling for ESU-vs-replace decisions. | With prices rising 15–20%, knowing exactly which devices to replace (and in what order) isn't a nice-to-have anymore. The planner gives you the data to submit a refresh budget that reflects current pricing, not last quarter's. |
The disposal problem nobody planned for
The Windows 10 end-of-life in October 2025 triggered the largest coordinated device retirement wave in over a decade. Seven months in, the downstream effects are showing up: ITAD (IT Asset Disposition) vendors are reporting capacity constraints and longer lead times for secure data destruction and certified recycling.
This matters for small teams in two ways. First, if you're planning to dispose of retired devices, book your ITAD vendor now — don't wait until Q4. Second, every device you dispose of needs to come out of your asset register. Sounds obvious, but it's the step that gets skipped. The result is ghost assets: devices that were recycled or sold months ago but still show up as "active" in your inventory. Ghost assets inflate your device count, distort your compliance reporting, and create confusion during audits.
// The right-to-repair angle
Before you send 50 Windows 10 machines to recycling, consider whether some of them have useful life left. If the CPU and RAM meet Windows 11 requirements (8th-gen Intel or newer, 4GB+ RAM, TPM 2.0), the device might just need a fresh OS install and a new battery. With right-to-repair laws now active in four states, getting OEM batteries and parts is legally straightforward. A $150 refurb is a lot cheaper than a $1,200 replacement — especially at current prices. The prerequisite: knowing the specs of every device in your fleet, which brings us back to the asset register.
Three reads worth your time this week
Pieces that crossed our desk this week and earned a bookmark:
- Gartner — "Surging Memory Costs Will Reduce Global PC and Smartphone Shipments in 2026." The headline number (130% memory price increase) gets the attention, but the useful detail is in the segment breakdown. Enterprise and commercial PCs are hit harder than consumer because the 32GB baseline for "AI PC" configs uses more of the expensive DDR5 that's in short supply. If you're speccing machines for a refresh, the 16GB config is still available and significantly cheaper — but OEMs are pushing 32GB as the default, and 16GB SKUs may get harder to source in H2.
- SecurityWeek — "Cyber Insights 2026: Regulations and the Tangled Mess of Compliance." A useful survey of where compliance requirements currently stand across jurisdictions. The through-line for ITAM teams: NIS2 (EU), DORA (EU financial services), NY DFS (US financial services), and updated CIS Controls all converge on the same requirement — a complete, current, maintained inventory of IT assets and third-party dependencies. If you're subject to any of these, the asset register isn't optional. If you're subject to more than one, the register needs to serve multiple compliance frameworks simultaneously.
- Cloud Magazin — "SaaS Sprawl Audit: How Cloud Teams Move from Billing Chaos to a Resilient SaaS Inventory." A practical 90-day playbook for mid-sized companies to get SaaS spend under control. The methodology is sound: start with expense reports and credit card statements (not vendor dashboards), build a master list, then cross-reference with SSO logs to find what's actually being used. The shadow AI angle we covered in our May 4 issue fits directly into this framework.
Shadow AI update: consumption pricing is the new trap
Our shadow AI piece from May 4 continues to generate responses, and a pattern is emerging in the feedback: the biggest surprises aren't the $20/month per-seat subscriptions — it's the consumption-priced API tools.
Teams are discovering that developers, data analysts, and even marketing staff have signed up for AI API access (Claude, GPT-4, Gemini) on personal or team credit cards, with usage-based pricing that can spike 10x in a busy month. One team reported a single developer's API bill going from $50/month to $500/month after they started using AI-assisted code generation for a large migration project. Multiply that across a team, and you have a material untracked expense.
The fix isn't to ban AI tools — it's to bring them into the inventory. Add AI API subscriptions to your software asset register. Track them the same way you track SaaS seats: who has access, what's the monthly cost, what data flows through the tool, and is there a DPA in place. The CIS Controls update from last week explicitly includes AI tools in the software inventory requirement, so this is now a compliance item, not just a cost-management one.
Field test: the refresh readiness check
If the hardware pricing news has you thinking about accelerating your refresh cycle, here's a 30-minute exercise to assess your readiness. You'll know exactly where you stand.
- Pull your fleet age distribution. How many devices are 0–2 years old? 2–4? 4+? The 4+ bucket is your refresh priority list. If you can't answer this question without opening three different spreadsheets, that's the first problem to solve.
- Check OS versions. How many machines are still on Windows 10? If you're paying ESU ($61/device Year 1, $122 Year 2), calculate your total ESU cost and compare it to the replacement cost at current pricing. The crossover point may have moved closer with the 15–20% price increase.
- Identify the refurb candidates. Devices with 8th-gen+ Intel CPUs, 8GB+ RAM, and TPM 2.0 can run Windows 11. If the device is in good physical condition, a fresh install plus a battery replacement may buy you 2 more years. Especially worth doing if you're in a right-to-repair state (CO, NV, OR, WA).
- Book your ITAD vendor. For the devices that are genuinely end-of-life, don't wait until you have a pile of 50 laptops in a closet. ITAD capacity is constrained right now. Book your pickup, get your certificates of destruction, and close out those asset records. Ghost assets are a compliance liability.
- Re-price your budget. If your approved refresh budget was based on Q4 2025 or Q1 2026 pricing, add 15–20%. If that blows the budget, prioritize by business impact: which roles can't function on aging hardware? Which devices are a security risk (no TPM, can't run current OS)? Sequence the replacements accordingly.
Housekeeping
Last week's coverage of the CIS Controls v8.1 update continues to be relevant — if you missed it, it pairs well with this week's compliance section. The thread connecting these issues is tightening: asset inventory is now simultaneously a security requirement (CIS), a compliance requirement (NIS2, DORA), a cost-management requirement (SaaS sprawl, shadow AI), and a procurement requirement (refresh planning at volatile prices). It's the same data serving four different stakeholders.
The ITAM market itself continues to grow — projected at $5.04B in 2026, up from $4.66B in 2025. The growth is coming from exactly the segment we serve: small and mid-market teams that are being held to enterprise compliance standards without enterprise tooling or headcount. Spreadsheets aren't scaling. The question isn't whether to adopt proper ITAM tooling — it's when, and the compliance calendar is making that decision for a lot of teams this year.
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