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Aucbvax.1639 fa.apollo utzoo!duke!decvax!ucbvax!SK@MIT-MC Thu Jun 11 22:44:48 1981 personal computer economics I think your argument is a little incomplete.

Suppose I make you the following deal: if you give me $10,000 today, I will give you at least $5,000 every year for the next 5 years. I think you will accept my deal, right?

Ok, now let's look at Star and suppose I can prove to you that it makes me 10% more effective (this is hard to prove) or that it saves me 10% of my time. My time actually costs the company $60,000 a year. And I am but a lowly engineer making under $30K/year. So if the if I do my work 10% faster, the company in some way, "saves" $6,000/yr. (the savings could be in hiring less engineers or by getting more work done per unit time or by getting the job done more effectively).

In fact, the Booz-Allen study on the potential of office automation (a very thorough case study of over 40 companies) concluded the AVERAGE ROI on OA equipment was 86% annually and could be over 200% in some companies.

I think it is foolish to measure a system on cost. You measure on price/performance or ROI. If Xerox can prove a high ROI, they will win.

I must work for one of those "VERY few" companies who spend over $10,000 on computer equipment for engineers. It costs us $60,000 to provide a computer port into our Data General Eclipse.

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