From today's NY Times:

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It will be some time before the full loss of human life is known. It will be 
even longer before property losses can be assessed.

But here is one small but staggering part of the cost: securities firms alone 
will spend at least $3.2 billion — and maybe more than $7 billion — to 
replace the computer systems destroyed in the attack, according to one 
detailed estimate.

A partial inventory, according to the Tower Group, a technology research 
firm, includes 50,000 trading- desk workstations, at $52,000 each; 34,000 
personal computers, at $2,000 to $6,000 each; 8,000 Intel and 5,000 Unix 
servers at a total cost of about $370 million; 1,000 Bloomberg L.P. 
information computer terminals worth an unknown amount; and $300 million in 
printers, hubs, switches, data storage and other networking hardware. And 
added to the total is at least $1.5 billion to put the systems together.

Dell said it had sold more than 24,000 servers, laptops and desktop computers 
as of Monday to replace equipment lost in the attacks. The company sent 
hundreds of technicians to Manhattan and to the Washington area, converted 
three 18- wheel trucks into mobile technology support-and-installation 
facilities, and chartered an airliner to fly parts from Taiwan to its Texas 
factory.

One company grappling with a sudden shortage of computers was Lehman 
Brothers, which had to evacuate its headquarters in the World Financial 
Center, next to the World Trade Center complex. Lehman relocated quickly to 
office space in Jersey City that is usually occupied by its operations and 
technology staff, and took up new quarters as well in an undisclosed location 
in Midtown, said William J. Ahearn, a company spokesman. Over the weekend, 
boxes of computers, monitors and keyboards arrived, and new systems were set 
up in the office space in New Jersey.

"We can't even begin to imagine how much it will cost to replace what we have 
lost," said Mr. Ahearn, who spent yesterday on the trading floor.

The computer industry has been reeling from a yearlong slump in personal 
computer sales. But while officials at Compaq, Dell and other major 
manufacturers were hesitant to discuss the situation, each received large 
orders in recent days from securities firms and other tenants who had 
occupied buildings in and around the trade center.

Dell, a nimble manufacturer that has long been a favorite among businesses, 
had swiftly positioned itself to fill requests from the Pentagon, from 
businesses affected by the trade center attacks and from disaster-management 
groups in Washington and New York City that might need extra systems. (Part 
of Dell's business method is to keep no inventory, relying instead on 
building models to customer specifications.)

Compaq established what it called a command center in Cupertino, Calif., to 
take urgent requests from companies in New York and Washington. Compaq, which 
has a large share of the financial services market, received orders from 
hundreds of affected corporate clients, said Arch Currid, a company spokesman.

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Wirt Atmar

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