Computersight -

Open Excel to begin. Start slowly and do not rush the numbers. It’s better to do slower and good. See how much you spend with Windows Vista. In my country Windows Vista costs around 300$. Calculating the software costs besides the operating system is the next part. If your purchase Office 2007 in my country you spend something like 500$! This is too much for an office tool. Feeling confused? You shouldn’t. This all will start to make sense later. Then you have the De-fragmentation software that costs around 50$ for an year. Then you have the Encryption program. If you use True Crypt is free but if you use another one you pay between 30$ and 150$. And then you also have the Winzip which currently is the King of compression that costs around 50$. And this is not near finish. You also have the backup tools that range from the free ones to the mos expensive ones that cost around 100$. Then you have the Anti virus, then you have the Firewall, then you have the Anti Spyware, then the external storage devices for the backup that cost from 20$ to 1000$.

Can you see already how much you are going to spend in your computer? If you do the math, you see a car is cheaper, even a good one. Most of this software will work only for a year or two years or the warranty of the computer. After that you need to make all the investment again. I can almost see you pulling your hair.

How much will you spend with Could computing? The operating system is free. You just need to download Linux, I would go for the Mint distribution, the only thing you pay is the internet and only if you do not choose to go to a public library. With Linux in a CD it’s time for installation. Linux is safer than Windows because since less people use it and it’s open source, it’s much easier to keep with with the security flaws. Here instead of spending 300$ you spend 0$

So far you saved 300$.

The next thing to see how much you can save with an Office application. If you use Google docs you have Word and Excel, but Zoho is much better. With Zoho you spend 0$ you have advanced online tools, plus project management, database and almost everything you would see in an office suite package. And you also spend 500$ less.

So far you saved 800$.

Now if you want a fast hard disk, you either buy a super expensive SSD or you need to use a regular one with a defragmentation software that costs around 50$. If you use Cloud computing they take care of this for you, this means you do not even have to worry about defragmentation at all. You just saved 50$.

So far that makes 850$.

You need to keep your information safe unless you want to be like the Portuguese minister of Justice that had her laptop stolen with all information stored in the text format with no encryption. This was such a bomb in the news about a year ago. You do not want to be like her. You want to protect your information. How to do that? You can use free software, which requires more time and learning, or you can spend something like another 50$ for it. With Cloud computing your information is stored only only and already encrypted with the best AES algorithms.

That makes less 900$ to spend so far.

You want to have your files in a smaller format to carry with you everywhere. With Winzip you can have text files as small as 95% of the original size. However the price is another expense to your business. 50$ is too much for this. Online cloud computing storage has enough storage for all your files so you do not need to worry about compression.

This makes 950$ less.

Now unless you want to kiss goodbye to all your information if the hard disk fails, you want to backup all information to somewhere safe. With good software you can do it daily or weekly but you need to spend something like 100$ plus another 200$ for an external hard disk. With cloud computing the information backup is done by them. You do not need to spend time or money here.

This makes less 1250$ to spend.

Now the security. Cloud computing already has all the security software you need to work safely, but if you choose to work in your own computer you need to spend 100$ for the Anti Virus, plus another 100$ for the Firewall plus another 100$ for the Anti Spyware. Wow, this makes already 300$ just for security, and you need to buy new software every year again.

That makes 1550$.

Windows and Office 2007 last more than a year but all other software lasts just a year so calculate how much you will be spending per month on average for this software and compare it with Cloud computing.

Of course cloud computing has it’s limitations too. It is only good for web workers plus office usage. Computer simulations and similar tasks must be done using the Desktop only, but most people just want the Office and little more.

Is this the moment you will finally upgrade?