Labnotes » TCO: what hardware are you factoring for?

Earlier today someone trolled a price comparison between an HP notebook ($700) and a MacBook ($1,500). Not worth linking to, Google if you’re curious. As with all good link-baits, it didn’t take long for people to respond, suggesting that maybe the hardware price difference is easily offset by the difference in operating systems. TCO. Here’s Zoli, and Jake.

What I’m going to say is not as fun as projecting the hypothetical TCO savings of OS X vs Windows, but to me, much more important.

I’ve been using computers for way too many years. I’m not that old, mind you, but I have to start considering where the next big maintenance bill will come from. And it won’t fall in the IT budget.

You see, the most expensive piece of hardware to maintain is the one I run: eyes, back, fingers. It’s very, very, expensive to repair, and it requires a lot of downtime. So that’s the first TCO on my mind when purchasing a new computer.

I already pay more, annually, for contact lens than for replacing defective drives or depleted batteries. And I fixed the last two by syncing my files, so they’re backed up in real time.

Quality of the operating system is nowhere near in importance as quality of the screen, carry weight, keyboard and trackpad. For that matter, anything that puts less stress on my hardware is worth it, even if that means running regedit on occasion.

I said trolling because that article picked a budget HP machine, one of those that come with last decade’s dim screens, and for all its 14″ size weighs around 6lb. If you’re in the market for anything of decent quality, and it doesn’t matter what vendor you buy from, you’re looking at a higher price bracket.

Last year my primary machine was a Vaio running Linux. I was tempted by OS X, especially after many nights spent trying to get Linux to resume from suspend and get over the WiFi woes. But, expensive as it was on launch date, the Vaio had the best screen, excellent keyboard, all around performance and only 3.7lb to carry.

I got the MacBook Air the first day it went in stores because it improved on the Vaio in every respect. Brilliant screen, outstanding keyboard, less weight, similar performance profile. It costs more to buy, but comes with a higher resale value, so about the same paid to own. That, and it runs OS X.

You might have a different category you’re looking at. Maybe you can go for a smaller machine, or need something larger in size, or have different keyboard sensibilities, or need 4 USB ports, or need to look at a different price bracket. But whatever you do, if you read this blog chances are you spend enough time with your computer to not be buying any discount PC you can pick at Wal-Mart.

When it comes to calculating TCO, consider those components that don’t come with warrantee and are not easily replaceable.

Aug 6th, 2008

Paul Brown

Consider TCO only when it makes or breaks the business proposition. If MacBook Pro versus Dell doesn’t move the bottom line significantly, then don’t sweat the small stuff if it nets you an intangible (e.g., employee good will).

IMHO, of course.

Aug 7th, 2008

Jake

I glossed over the h/w concerns initially, so thanks for adding your thoughts. As a s/w guy, I prefer to poke that aspect of this discussion.
As you suggest, the h/w isn’t even a fair comparison simply b/c each machine is the cheapest in its O/S category. I wonder why the Eee PC didn’t make the list. Again, probably not h/w you’d want to use, but it’s cheap, which qualifies it for this debate. Plus it add a Linux distro to the TCO discussion.
Anyway, I like your characterization of the “research” as trolling, very accurate.

BTW, your OpenID is telling me it can’t authenticate with my OpenID.

Assaf

@Paul. When you get great people to come working for you, give them the best tools - which is always a personal choice, it has a serious affect on the bottom line. Great products created by motivated talented people sell better. My policy has always been “use whatever you feel like using”.

@Jake. Don’t expect that “research” to be exhaustive, it’s trying to make a point not provide any useful information for decision making. Hence the total ignorance of features that factor into most people’s buying decision, and no, it’s not disk space or GHz, but build quality, brand, look & feel, pride. A lot of people don’t care, but a lot of people won’t buy a computer they can’t bring home to mom.