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Comment by craftinator

4 years ago

What's it like renting a computer?

The tricky part with renting a computer is that you have to insure it against accidental damage by the renter, and that has to be “gig economy” or “business” compatible insurance, because you’re profiting from loaning it to others.

There’s also not exactly a huge market for rental computers when you consider that libraries offer them for free, and often with better Internet connections than those renting a computer could offer.

Renting computers is a lot easier if you host them in the cloud and deny physical access to your customers, though — they generally can’t do permanent damage, and there’s no issues with theft/loss. But this isn’t typically viewed as “renting” anymore, but instead something like “colocation” or whatever EC2 is.

Why do you ask?