Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), Is Not Just A Buzzword Anymore
According to webopedia TCO is defined like so:
Abbreviation of Total Cost of Ownership, a very popular buzzword representing how much it actually costs to own a PC. The TCO includes:
1. Original cost of the computer and software
2. Hardware and software upgrades
3. Maintenance
4. Technical support
5. Training
But what does that really mean for the average consumer? Not much I am afraid. Most people who go out and buy a Dell have no clue that TCO is something they should consider. No, they only think about point #1 and just assume that the rest of that stuff will magically be ok.
Most of the “average” consumers that I have talked to seem to think that the price on the sticker is the “real” price that they are going to pay. Thus when you compare Dells to Apples the Dells always look better. But looks can be deceiving.
You see, when you buy a PC you obviously first look at the price tag. And let’s say a Brand New Dell cost $500. Then you have to add in virus protection, which costs anywhere for $30 - $60 per year. And of course you have to think about buying software and upgrading your OS. All of these things are fairly obvious and even the densest consumers have some inkling about their importance.
Well, that marks #1, 2 & 3 from the list and #5 really don’t apply so that leaves us with #4. And oddly enough most people tend to forget that very important selling point. You see, when you buy a Dell you get, free for a year, Dell’s suck-ass tech support. Of course at the time most consumers don’t think about that, all they care about is that their Dell cost $200 less than my Mac. And they chortle to themselves about the great deal they got. But when a problem comes up I can rest easy knowing that (according to consumer reports and my own experience) Apple has, by far, the best tech support around.
This situation is kind of similar to when I hear people talk about how good a deal they got on their Hyundai and how cheaper it was than a Honda. Ok, but what happens if it breaks down? And you have to get it repaired? Is it cheaper then? Because Hondas have awesome reliability, Hyundais, not so much. So, you need to assume that it will break and thus you will need to pay for repairs. How can that not be part of your buying process when looking for a car?
All of this leads me up to today’s story. This tale is about a good friend of mine and her mother. Both the friend and the mother are very smart people, in their field. However, they have little computer savvy. Thus, when their machine breaks they call tech support. This is a summary of what happened:
They plugged in a digital camera and couldn’t get it to load pictures onto the harddrive. No problem, they just call tech support. And who should pick up but a friendly resident of India! Who, in heavily accented and broken English, attempts to help them with their problem. Well, not to be daunted by this cab driver turned tech support helper they begin to lay out for him their fairly simple problem. His solution? You know you’re going to love it! Wait for it, wait for it. . .
Reformat the %@#*&!~ harddrive!
See, that $200 you saved isn’t looking so important now is it? But let me get back to the story. They didn’t know any better so they decided to take his advice and reformat the harddrive. Now, before all of you computer literate folks start calling them morons please remember that they don’t know as much about their machines as you do. So, before you judge them think about this. If you went to the hospital and the doctor told you that you were sick and needed to take a certain medication would you believe him? Sure, because he is a doctor and he works in a hospital and he has a nametag. And as far as you are concerned he knows more about the problem than you do so you are going to take his advice and use the medicine. You have no way of knowing if he gave you sugar pills or anthrax. You are just trusting that he is a real doctor who really knows what he is doing.
So, having said that I shall once again return to my story. They proceed to reformat the harddrive. Once they are done he tells them to insert their restore disks. What are those they ask? Why, the backups you made before wiping your drive, he responds. But you never told us to do that, they wail. Um, didn’t it say that on the screen? Yeah, but we didn’t know what it meant and you didn’t say anything about it so we just clicked past it. In fact, they only were able to save some documents and a few pictures to their harddrive.
But it gets better. They can’t find their application restore disks either. Uh oh. So what do they do? Why, the buy another set of disks from the same fools who told them to reformat their harddrive, then they ship their computer back to the manufacture who then reinstalls their software for them and then ships their computer back to them a few days later. The phone calls took hours, the repairs took days, but the best is yet to come.
When she tells me this entire story I look at her and quietly inform her that maybe she should look into getting a Mac. Her response? Oh no, we would never do that, they are too hard to use. Hard to use? Damn, you just went through all of that and still think Macs are hard to use? How freaking stupid can you get?
And yet this mindset is more common than you think. So, next time you argue with someone about getting a Mac don’t bother talking about OS X, or how cool the computer looks, or how there aren’t any viruses for the Mac, instead, talk about tech support. And how when you call Apple’s help line you can be guaranteed to talk to someone who a) speaks your language, b) has a brain and c) can actually help you fix your problem.
Isn’t that worth a few extra bucks?
Nah, probably not. Much easier just to reformat your harddrive every time there is a problem.
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Comments
Interesting James - when I had my PC support business a few years ago, it amazed me how often people would rather pay me 40 bucks an hour to help them, than call their PC vendor’s *free* support line.
I don’t know what the service from Apple is like having never required it, but you could be on to something.
True, I just sold my mobile PC repair business - operating for more than 3 years - just a few months ago and I know of only a handful of customers that had ever even attempted phone support.
Since I got very burned out on the whole experience of working on my own PC’s (and PC’s in general) I bought two Dell’s instead of building my own. I have had occasion to use Dell’s support line and I wouldn’t really call it “suck ass” though. To give credit where it’s due, Dell doesn’t have a bad reputation in this area and the two different support staff members I’ve spoke with were very helpful, at least as far as my particular hardware difficulties were concerned. I had put it off for awhile, not wanting to deal with it, but ended up pleasantly surprised.
I’ve had only one experience with the Apple support line and they too were very helpful. Now, if only they could get such knowledgable and friendly people working in their stores - we’d really be onto something.
Cab driver turned tech support helper? Are you kidding me? Did you really allow yourself to print that to be read by the public? Clearly, you should be apologizing to someone.
Not quiet true, if you live in the UK.
My powerbook has died on me twice in the past year (motherboard once and hard-drive once).
When I phoned Apple for support, the first thing the Indian call centre worker does is try to get me to buy AppleCare (never miss a sales opportunity).
This in heavily accented and broken english.
Of course it took them around 15 minutes to actually answer the phone.
Then he asks me to run hardware tests from the apple DVD.
Then he asks me to reformat and re-install before finally accepting it’s a hardware problem.
The only benefit I found compared with Dell was, in both cases it took less than a week for them to fix it and get it back to me.
I don’t know how things work in the U.K., but here in Canada I experienced a dvd drive failure in my brand new 15” PB about a month ago. I didn’t call tech support, I simply went to a computer store in the city that services Macs, gave them my name (which they looked up on Apple’s list of registered owners) so that they could make sure that the warranty was valid, and told them what was wrong.
We arranged for me to keep the machine while the part was in transit from California. Two days later I got a call, went to the store, waited 30 minutes and was given my machine back. Lo and behold, the same fault happened (it appears that there is a wonky batch of superdrives in the system) and I went through the whole procedure again.
Aside from the inconvenice of having to go to the store for an extra round of repairs, I can’t really say that I had an inpleasant experience. Apple replaced the drive twice without hesitation, the apple-certified tech knew his stuff, and I now have a perfectly functionning superdrive in a perfectly functionning PowerBook.
As an aside I will say that I always try to establish a good relationship with the store/tech guy whom I am dealing with, as I find it much easier to call a human being who actually knows me, and to ask this person the question. Generally the techie at the store will know almost as much about the machine as the person in tech support, and I have the added security of actually being able to see/know the person giving me the advice.
THIs seems to work well, as I’ve encountered a number of apple-certified techs in a variety of cities in North America who are incredibly knowledgeable about the platform and more than willing to help beyond their typical tech brief.
Clearly we are dealing once again with the Apple reality distortion field, where Dell’s tech support sucks ass while Apple’s is the very bestest in the industry, and anyone who doesn’t use a Mac is a blathering moron. Nope, no bias there. I’ve used Dell support and they were nothing but helpful. At the same time, I’ve heard horror stories about Apple tech support (which, if you get Apple Care, adds considerably to that TCO).
TCO, while certainly valid up to a point, is another one of those issues blown way out of proportion and seized upon by Mac users (along with the clock speed myth) to try desperately to justify the higher price tag and lower processor speeds on Macs.
Beeb,
“Clearly we are dealing once again with the Apple reality distortion field, where Dell’s tech support sucks ass while Apple’s is the very bestest in the industry”
Did you even bother to do any research before you started typing? I know, lets check out Consumer Reports shall we?
Desktops
Laptops
They also have this to say:
For the best reliability and support:
Apple
As our survey reports continue to indicate, Apple’s reliability and support are top-notch.
Pick up any issue of CR for the last three years, flip to the computer section and it will say the same thing. Apple has the best tech support by far. Now, I am sure that you can get someone helpful at Dell or HP but on average they aren’t even in the same field as Apple.
Oh, and please feel free to tell my friend that even though she has lost most everything on her harddrive her issues are “blown way out of proportion” That kind of stuff doesn’t really matter because your “average” user never has any problems to being with right?
Um, I am thinking no. And by the way, did I mention anything about clock speed comparisons?
First of all, James, I don’t see any real dollar values attached to those reports. I’m not disputing the reliability of Macs, I’m saying I see no evidence that it adds up to quite the real world dollars that you’d like it to. Like I said, TCO is a valid issue, but not to the extent Mac fanatics would like it to be.
And I bring up clock speed myth because, like TCO, it’s an issue that Mac fanatics have seized upon as closing the gap between Macs and PCs way more than it actually does.
And with you in particular these issues get heavily, heavily distorted through the “everything Mac is great and everything else sucks” filter.
Oh, and please feel free to tell my friend that even though she has lost most everything on her harddrive her issues are “blown way out of proportion”
As soon as you tell her how “freaking stupid” she is for not buying a Mac. That’s the way to win hearts and minds.
I think some people are missing the point of James’ commentary. The fact is, I think the kind of short-sighted attitude he was writing about is all too common.
Did anyone ever read Mark Twain’s “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court?” It’s about how an engineer - a Renaissance type of man in terms of knowledge - inexplicably wakes up to find himself in the time of King Arthur.
In any case, armed with 19th century knowledge of science and mathematics, proceeds to try to change medieval society for the better (he manages to convince people he’s more powerful than the seeming fraud of a wizard named Merlin).
In one scene, he tries to introduce the concept of “buying power” to the mostly illterate peasants. He sets up an example in which one woman earns something like $5 a day and another woman from another town earns only $4 a day for the same work. He ask, who is better off?
The peasants reply, the woman who makes more, of course!
Springing his trap of revelation, the engineer then says, but wait! What if the woman who makes $5 a day has to pay $2 for milk, $1 for bread, and $1 for vegetables each day, while the other woman only has to pay $1 for milk, 50 cents for bread and 50 cents for vegetables? Who is better off now?
The peasants all reply, the woman who makes $5!
He then proceeds with frustration and futility to try to explain that, even making $4 a day, the woman is better off because she has $2 left over at the end of the day while the other woman, due to the higher cost of living, has only $1 left. But try as he might, the peasants continue to angrily refuse to accept that the idea that a person who only makes $4 a day could be better off than someone who makes $5 a day.
And this was Mark Twain writing social satire in the 19th century. People’s mentality about TCO today is similar. Things don’t change much, do they?
In any case, I’d love to read about a follow-up story to your friend’s situation. Maybe seeing how well a camera works when hooked up to a Mac will cause your friend and her mother to reconsider.
I did a small survey today of 12 “average computer users”, none of which use Macs by the way, to see how accurate this is on a small scale.
Broken down into rough (rounded to the nearest 10%) percentages:
1. The amount of people who had bought antivirus: 50% yes, 20% no, 30% don’t know
2. The amount of people who had invested in antispyware: 10% yes, 0% no, 90% dont know
3. Users who had ever called tech support: 80% yes, 20% no
4. Users who were happy with their tech support service: split exactly even between yes, no, and dont know (which sort of makes you wonder).
5. Users who had given ANY thought to TCO: 0% yes, 100% no (there were a few don’t knows until the basic principles were explained).
6. Users who knew what CPU clock speed actually meant, not by definition but by advantages to their computer experience: 30% yes, 70% no.
Granted, this is a very unscientific survey, I was just curious to see how knowledable people are about certain things and, more importantly, where their priorities are. It still seems as though the end user is his/her own worst enemy, especially when it comes down to costs.
I think some people are missing the point of James’ commentary.
No I think I get the gist of it. Dell tech support sucks ass. PC users are freaking stupid. And Indian tech supporters are all former cab drivers, because I guess he believes Indians are good for little else.
But I’m the one who “didn’t do any research” before I started typing.
PS: according to that CR report, Toshiba laptops are more reliable than Apple laptops. And since CR reported it then it must be indisputable fact, info I’m sure he passed on to his “freaking stupid” friend.
...well, with Apple having only 5% market share I suppose you could make the assumption that you’d find more “freaking stupid” PC users out there than “freaking stupid” Mac users - in sheer numbers of course.
...in sheer numbers of course.
That’s debatable, Dick. Very debatable.
I think some people are missing the point of James’ commentary.
No I think I get the gist of it. Dell tech support sucks ass. PC users are freaking stupid. And Indian tech supporters are all former cab drivers, because I guess he believes Indians are good for little else.
But I’m the one who “didn’t do any research” before I started typing.
PS: according to that CR report, Toshiba laptops are more reliable than Apple laptops. And since CR reported it then it must be indisputable fact, info I’m sure he passed on to his “freaking stupid” friend.
By Beeblebrox on 2005 07 09
Ok Beeb, where to begin? First, let me say that I can’t tell if you are just deliberately trying to be belligerent or if you really do have the reading comprehension skills of a 6th grader. Either way let me try and explain to you the point of my article because clearly you didn’t get it.
The central theme of this article can best be summed up like this, “Most people don’t understand (and thus don’t take into account) TCO. Technical support is a facet of TCO. Here is an example of someone who got very bad TS. Maybe next time that experience will shape her idea of just how much a computer ‘cost’ in the long run.”
If this piece was meant to compare tech support I would have included those graphs/numbers in the original story. I also would have used more than one story as a reference, had that been my goal. However, it was not. But that can be the subject of a future post if you would like.
Oh, one last thing. I noticed you don’t seem to care for Consumer Reports, why? You seem to indicate that you didn’t find them to be a reliable, unbiased source and this rather confused me. Do you have any credible reason to doubt them? Or did you just not like the reference because it tended to agree with my position?
But as always Beeb thanks for the comments. Better luck next time.
First, let me say that I can’t tell if you are just deliberately trying to be belligerent
Yeah, that’s rich coming from the guy who refers to Indian tech supporters as former cab drivers, calls his friend “freaking stupid”, and wonders if I have the reading comprehension skills of a 6th grader.
Quite frankly, I don’t know how you earned the right to post articles here, but you’re exactly the kind of person who gives Mac fans such a bad reputation.
Thus when you compare Dells to Apples the Dells always look better. But looks can be deceiving.
This is real the gist of your article. Had it just been about TCO in general, that’s one thing. Yes, it’s an important factor when shopping for a computer or a car or whatever. But you and I both know what your agenda is here. And you and I both know this because TCO is just another in a long, long, long history of Mac-fanatic memes that use fuzzy math and conveniently unquantifiable criteria to put Macs ahead of other computers.
And in your case, when you take away the FUD, the racist comments, and calling your friends “freaking stupid”, you’re not left with much in the way of cold hard facts. A CR report about reliability addresses reliability. The rest is just assumptions, distortions, and epithets, which doesn’t really prove anything.
Do you have any credible reason to doubt them? Or did you just not like the reference because it tended to agree with my position?
My criticism was not about the veracity of the CR report, it was about your gross misinterpretation of it.
I’ll put it this way, the CR report says that Toshiba laptops are more reliable than Mac laptops. And since Toshiba laptops are also less expensive, would you recommend a Toshiba to anyone who asks you about laptops or would you tell them to get an ibook or a Powerbook despite that CR report?