How much is a slow computer costing you?

 Almost everyone now interacts with a computer at some point during their day. For those of us unfortunate enough to be stuck with slow outdated equipment, it may be worth taking the time to look at exactly how much that slow computer is actually costing in both time and money.There was a study done in 2013 that estimated a slow computer can cost you 5.5 days per year! That's a lot of downtime to go along with the bad moods and frustration that come with actually using said computer. Assuming the average work year has about 240 days in it, some quick math tells us that we're losing about 11 minutes per day. I don't know about you, but I've definitely been in work environments where that number sounds about right on target. That turns out to be about 2.3% of your total time worked during the year. We can take that number and do some more quick math (this is fun right!) to get to some real dollar values and insight into what it means to continue working on slow/outdated hardware. Let's take a look at what a typical company may look like.

• Average Salary - $50,000
• Average Hourly Labor Rate (Fully Burdened) - $30/Hour
• Annual Time Wasted Due to Slow Computer - 46 hours (Assuming an employee works 50 weeks a year, 40 hours a week, that puts us at 2000 hours a year * 2.3%)
• Annual Cost of Time Waste - $1,380 per employee
• Annual Opportunity Cost of Time Waste - $3,600 per employee (Assuming you gain 46 hours of productivity back from your employee, that's more than a week of work!)
• Total Annual Cost of Slow Computer - $4,980 per employee

I've tried to be pretty conservative about putting all these numbers together but even if the time wasted is half of this projection, we've still got some pretty eye opening numbers. Considering a new speedy workstation will generally cost you about $1000, I'd say the return is probably worth it given the recouped productivity and the elimination of the stress frustration that a slow computer causes. If you're a home user you may be fine chugging away with what you've got, but if you're a business owner or an employee it may be time to start thinking about replacing that old computer and moving on to something new. Want Bellingham IT blog updates to hit your email? Click here to subscribe