In short, unless you have numbers to indicate otherwise, I can't say that PCs cost you much, in the short term or the long term.

What Cisco's will buy you is better handling of T3s, SONET, etc., and the ability to handle much higher performance lines. They also have much better remote management facilities, in so far as the things have real serial consoles and such, which PCs don't.

Perry

One PC remote management win is that you can actually have secure encrypted access/authentication for remote management, rather than relying passwords in the clear and tftp. This is lacking in all router venders at this instant, far as I know. Selina