[rglullis]

When I was working at Deutsche Telekom, I actually heard the CIO from a German Bank say they "were not interested in our (Chromebook-like) solution, because if adopted it will be a lot cheaper than their current windows licenses and that would mean he would lose his budget in 2 years".

Also, the idea that someone charging $2k for two days of work is considered "doing it on the cheap" is almost offensive.

[dtjb]

Relative to the enterprise vendor, that is very much on the cheap. I wasn't placing any value on your work, I was referring to the ubiquitous "I know a guy" cost cutting solutions that end up somehow being very, very expensive in the end.

[rglullis]

I didn't mean offensive to me, the offensive part is to think as a shareholder or a taxpayer hearing that this kind of problem actually warrants so much money.

I know that people can come up with many perfectly reasonable justifications to spend this much on a service, but to someone like me who grew up in a poor country dealing with recession and austerity policies, it's hard to see these things and not thing "surely we can achieve the same results spending less?"