One might argue that this is the reason that this machine was so cheap. Indeed, we opted for a consumer desktop because it represented such a bargain. But after we had it up and running for a while, we were rudely reminded of the concept of ‘true cost of ownership.’ Almost immediately, we realized that the sound card was essentially nonfunctional, and within a week or two, the computer was already moving along at such an incredibly painful crawl — due, I’m sure, to some ill behaved junkware pre-installed on the system — that our colleague had to abandon it altogether. Some bargain.