If you are in the market for a tablet, do you want to pay a monthly bill on your tablet, or just one up front cost?
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Unlike the iPhone, which is subsidized by carriers in exchange for a long term contract, prepaid phones are typically sold for a modest up front cost, and service is paid for month-to-month.
SolarCity also hopes to help eliminate the up front cost of retrofits to homeowners the way it does with solar by tapping into the growing number of so-called Property Assessed Clean Energy, or PACE, financing programs.
The advantage of the residential approach is that selling the apartments up front covers the cost of the ship's construction.
"The cost of renewable energy is up front slightly higher than conventional, but when you implement full infrastructure cost and the cost of environmental pollution you end up being the same or higher, " said McNeilly.
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Consolidations cost money up front, because there are usually some relocation and other office related costs.
Compared to standard postpaid mobile plans, prepaid plans cost consumers less up front and do not require a contract.
You would pay more up front for the hardware, but then the cost of the individual books would be really cheap, right?
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In effect, the move provides more up-front revenue to the Treasury, but potentially at the cost of revenue over the long term as taxes paid when individuals make withdrawals from their 401(k) plans would likely be far greater.
Although the company must invest in efficiency up front (as would also be the case with purchasing offsets), the cost savings can result in companies both doing good and doing well.
There is no question that the up-front ticket price is the most important consideration today in China, not the cost per kilometer over the life of the vehicle.
Vendor lock-in may be unavoidable at this point, but what companies need to do is understand up-front what the exit strategy will be, and build those costs into the initial cost analysis.
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Inventing a new drug may take years and cost millions, as Samuels noted, but software products require relatively little up-front investment.
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