$4000 dollars a year to support a laptop?

Infoworld reports that a Microsoft and Wipro study shows the annual cost of a Windows Vista laptop is only $3,802, while XP costs $4,407.

Let me repeat those figures.

Three thousand, eight hundred and two dollars compared to four thousand, four hundred and seven dollars.

That's per year.

Someone's kidding themselves. If I gave a client those numbers they'd go back to using abacuses, pilot pigeons and carbon paper.

There's no doubt the figures are fudged. 55% of the number comes from indirect cost and all but 5% is "User labor: Primarily self support and time spent learning to use IT systems".

The study also assumes all users have full admin rights. I suspect this actually understates the $635 per year direct support costs for XP in the study. Users screwing their machines through installing spyware and filesharing programs is a huge issue which seems to be a much smaller problem with Vista.

What interests me from a quick reading of the WIPRO study is that the savings seem to be mainly in the direct setup costs. This would be consistent with improved management tools for both Vista and Server 2003.

So while it is probably true rollout costs are cheaper for a properly kitted enterprise it means Vista's value proposition for home and small business users is dubious at best.

The other interesting point is the user labor number remains unchanged. This indicates businesses should be investing more in training and Microsoft's changes to the Vista and Office 2007 user interface hasn't helped those who use MS products for a living.

I'm not sure releasing figures like this will help Microsoft convince customers to upgrade. The idea of a laptop costing 4,000 per year is going to scare a lot of computer and business owners away from.