Martin Banks, Personal Computer World 11/88 - checked

Most of us will have heard the phrase: 'its a false economy' when something or other is talked about. You know the type of thing. You buy a brand new gizmo from a new supplier at a stunningly reduced price, convincing yourself that you have got a bargain, only to find later on that the thing is going to cost you a fortune to get going properly (or at all) and that it would have been much cheaper to get the more expensive but reputable gizmo all along.

And before anyone says anything; no, I am not about to launch into an attack on Amstrad or the other hardware suppliers. There is an economic argument for taking an established technology, especially one that has shown itself to be reasonably reliable, and selling it at an aggressive price.

What I am thinking about, however, is software products and, in a much wider context, how software products are an example of what I will take the liberty of calling 'social economics'. I am no economic theoretician, and no doubt many people will point out that this idea is not new. I still feel it worthy of some discussion, however.

So, back to my starting point: the false economy of applications software. Regular readers will know that I sometimes whitter on about cheap software, suggesting that the price should go up so that boring items like support and maintenance can be paid for. This is the basic level of false economy, for anyone who ever believes a software supplier that says their application program never crashes is a fool.

For many company users of PCs however, there are further layers of false economy to be considered. For example, I once discovered that one major UK corporation was spending approximately £250,000 a year on staff training. Not a lot I hear you say? It is when the staff are all experienced computer users but are still needing training courses to find out how to use new applications programs. And the courses are needed not because the staff are stupid and cannot work out what the application does, they need the courses to learn all the different command key patterns so that they can make the damned things go at all.

This is the economic balancing act which lies behind the development of IBM's Systems Application Architecture and Presentation Manager within OS/2. They are intended to give a unified user-interface on all applications so that this learning process is made redundant. To the individual user, buying a 4 Mbyte PC and OS/2 just to have the dubious privilege of knowing that 'CTRL S' means SAVE, regardless of the application, may seem a waste of money, but to any reasonable sized company it makes sense if they think about it.

The underlying idea behind this approach (rather than OS/2, about which I have some reservations) is that a bit of judicious investment in the first place usually makes the overall cost a great deal less. It seems eminently sensible, and what happens in the rest of life, yes?

No, I am afraid. I have seen some recent examples of 'no' which have brought home to me the lack of investment in the real right places at the right time, in favour of short-term balance sheet advantages. For example....British Telecom recently lost its monopoly on public pay phones, allowing in its upstart rival, Mercury Communications into public places and any number of competitors in the private location marketplace (ie pubs, hotels and the like). A good thing? Well competition can be, but the competitors are being allowed to 'cherry pick' where they put their pay phones and are naturally going for the places where the revenue potential is highest and the running costs are low. That means train stations and airports, nice hotels and smart pubs. As one supplier moving into the private premises market put it, "this is the only economic way of expanding the pay phone market."

But economic to who? To the balance sheets of the pay phone companies, yes, but not to BT, which gets rivals in the lucrative places which are supposed (by the company's charter) to help subsidise those pay phones in non-lucrative areas, and cover the cost of repairing vandalised inner city units. Neither is it economic to the person whose house is on fire and can't call the rescue services on an unrepaired pay phone, nor to the nation when a goodly portion of a city has caught light as a consequence. Far fetched? maybe, but time will tell.

Here's another example, and one most of you will have suffered. Have you ever stood in a queue at a Post Office and seen seven or eight service windows, but only one or two in use? Have you also looked at the huge queue waiting patiently and started working out how much cumulative time is wasted? Have you then tried to put a value on that time? Try it (and don't make the mistake of thinking women are housewives and their time is valueless: even if they are housewives their time is valuable, even the greatest chauvinist can work that out). Assume an average cost per individual of £2/hour and an average queuing time of 15 minutes. Then assume 20 people in the queue at all times.

I think you will find that it costs 'the nation' infinitely more in queuing costs than it would to staff at least one more service window. This in turn would provide one more job, more income tax and VAT and so on. But current thoughts on 'efficiency' makes it better to waste money on the queue to make the servicing staff more 'productive'.

And what has this got to do with personal computers? Well, not a lot, directly. But I feel the world must be full of similar examples of poor 'social' economics, and PCs are the ideal tool for us subversives, you know, the common herd, to quietly work them out and then use them to 'help' our politicians make better use of the world we live with, for we do have to live with it.

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