Do We Need Yet Another Office PC Upgrade?

Currently, large costs are incurred by organisations on regular upgrades of office PCs, yet there appears to be little basis to justify this expenditure. There are few ways of measuring the increased functionality provided by upgrades, and hence of assessing value for money. The paper describes a data-driven set of approaches to determining PC upgrade policy. The approaches are based on a synthesis of methods from OR replacement policy and software cost estimation.