BUYS COST FAR more than their initial purchase price alone.
Simply raising a purchase order will cost you something, and most PCs usually have associated ongoing costs, from training users for new operating systems and applications, to regular scheduled maintenance. The problem is in trying to quantify how much these costs add to the PC's initial price. Over the last few years, TCO has become an industry buzzword and is seen as a new means of differentiation between products. Both hardware and software vendors have come to rely heavily on TCO figures that seem to favour their products over competitors'. One company at the forefront of the debate is the Gartner Group.