Hamilton Group · Free Tool

The Cost of a Slow PC

Old computers don't announce themselves on the balance sheet — they turn up as wages paid for waiting. Work out what yours are costing, and how quickly replacing them pays for itself.

£0
a year in wages paid for waiting
£0
per person, per year
—
payback on replacement
 

1. Your team

Only count the people actually working on slow machines.

What the employee actually costs you, not what they take home.
260 less holiday, bank holidays and sickness.
Calculated from the figures above.

2. Where the time goes

Minutes lost per person, per day. The defaults describe a machine that is genuinely past it — adjust them to what your staff actually experience.

DelayMins/day
Total lost per person, per day0 mins

3. Reality check

Not every minute saved becomes useful work — people absorb small delays, and some jobs aren't limited by how fast the computer is. This is the single most important number on the page, and the one that keeps the answer honest.

60%

4. What fixing it costs

Two ways out. Replacing is the clean fix; an SSD and memory upgrade is cheaper but buys less time and won't rescue a machine that is genuinely obsolete.

Percent. A new machine rarely eliminates every delay — some are network or software.
Percent. Usually the biggest single improvement on an older machine.
Used for the multi-year comparison.

5. The decision

 Do nothingUpgradeReplace

Not sure which machines are actually the problem?

Hamilton Group audits your device estate, tells you what to replace, what to upgrade and what is fine as it is, and handles the rollout without the downtime. Book a free hardware review.

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This is an estimate, not an accounting figure. Time lost to slow computers is real, but it converts into money only where that time would otherwise have produced chargeable or productive work — which is what the reality-check percentage adjusts for. Device costs exclude VAT, software, and the labour involved in building and deploying machines. Use it to frame a decision, not to book a saving.