Figure 3. Effect of refresh rate on the 10‐year cost of purchase versus lease procurement.

Comparison of 10‐year total cost for a theoretical scientific instrument acquired by purchase (black bars) or lease (gray bars) with various refresh rates. Costs assume a lease rate of 30%. For purchased instrumentation, a service contract (5% of initial purchase) is included in non‐purchase years and a trade‐in discount (20%) is applied to purchases after year 1. All costs are normalized to the annual lease payment.