Keeping track of hardware guarantees / warranties (and possibly software licences)?

[Sysman]

I have various bits of hardware and have rather lost track of what I bought when. I know where I bought each piece of kit, but I cannot for the life of me remember the warranty details without sifting through old receipts. Some stuff comes with 1 year, other stuff comes with 3 years.

Is there any decent freeware out there that can make managing this easier?

Yes I have found Spiceworks and one or two others, but I ain't running hundreds of pieces of kit, so they may be overkill.

[doodab]

Can you not keep it in a spreadsheet in Google docs or Skydrive?

[Sysman]

Yes, a spreadsheet is probably the simplest solution.

I hadn't thought of Google docs or Skydrive, but this type of info is a prime candidate for stashing elsewhere for insurance purposes.

[ThomserveBAS]

For licenses I simply use Keepass (KeePass Password Safe)

As I mess around with VMs quite a lot, with masses of licenses from MSDN, it's useful to know which licenses are applied to which machines at a given point in time.