1:54 PM - Cost of ownership of your computer
Microsoft has always made a big deal about TCO (total cost of ownership) of various software products. Lately, they've even claimed macs are more expensive.
I recently had a discussion with my boss about the value of his laptop that he recently replaced. I made a comment he got his money's worth because it was beat to hell and he used it constantly. He took the time to figure out how much it cost him per day to own it. I never thought about that before with hardware when I buy a new system.
First, I decided to compare apples to oranges... well a mac to a dell. I bought a dell workstation in 2004 which is now running as server. Caryn bought a powermac g4 in 2002. Both are workstation class and cost about the same amount of money. Instead of comparing the original suggested retail prices or what we paid for them, I included all hardware upgrades like drives, ram, etc that we did in my calculation. I did not estimate when the upgrades happened and do an addition technique so this is off a bit. It's probably a bit higher. The daily cost of the powermac g4 for caryn was $1.095 a day whereas the Dell Precision 650 was $1.150 a day. Both are over a 5 year period. However, we still have the powermac and I used it a year after she did (not figured in) and it's sitting unused currently. The original cost of both machines was nearly identical. I replaced the video card in the dell within 3 days of owning it (had a firegl card that was a POS).
Upgrades on both systems include:
Video card (both got ATI cards.. ATI AIW9600XT vs ATI 9800 (mac)) I had to replace the AIW with an nvidia which gave out on me, and the ATI radeon mac card also died taking out the power supply, logic board, and itself in the mac. These repairs were included.
Hard drives were added to both systems. Typically they were around $100 or less. DVD burners were added to both systems.
Of course this is hardware cost. It has nothing to do with software.
Another example:
IBM Thinkpad T30 (refurb) bought from IBM about two years ago. Cost was just under $500. $0.685 a day before hardware upgrades. I added ram (had it so free), plus a new hard drive with a cost of $130. That brings it up to $0.86 a day. Finally, the wifi card brings it to $0.952 a day! I did not buy any software for this system as it came with windows and I've been running MidnightBSD on it primarily.
This is a whole new way to look at computer purchases for me.
Another example: an iMac purchased ~14 months ago would cost the owner 2.79 a day.
A PC bought in 2006, with many upgrades to keep it current would cost $1.65 a day.