The Microsoft stealth tax

I had to order four new PCs for a project last week, and went to a local firm which builds systems to order. When I got their quote for the job I realised something that I should have twigged years ago: the hardware is now the cheap bit. 21% of the cost of the ‘raw’ machine (i.e. just with an OS installed) goes to Microsoft. If you add in the cost of the Office suite, 55% of the total cost of the system constitutes the Microsoft ‘tax’. I wrote a column about it. Lots of feedback already from astonished business folk.

Why was I so surprised? Probably because I was conditioned by my early experience of computing 30 years ago, when hardware was expensive….