PC deal could save public sector billions

A deal struck by government CIO John Suffolk and the Cabinet Office could save the public sector billions of pounds by supplying networked, supported PCs for around half the typical price. Suffolk said the Cabinet Office had cut the total cost of ownership for PCs by half, compared with the Gartner benchmark price of £2,000 per PC. The Gartner benchmark is widely used in the public and private sectors for pricing PCs. If just £100 a year were saved on every PC used by the UK's three to four million public servants, the annual savings would be at least £3bn over 10 years.

[Note that these PC's come with OpenOffice.org and not MS-Office. - Sander]