The school board for the Bellevue School District has made the decision to purchase 1,350 additional Macintosh computers for computer laboratories in all its schools. Based on past experience, the school board also has directed that these computers should be purchased from some combination of three companies--Educomp, Macwin, and McElectronics. In all three cases, the companies charge a discounted variable cost per computer and a fixed delivery and installation cost for these large sales to school districts. The table below shows these charges as well as the capacity (the maximum number of computers that can be sold from the limited inventory) for each of the companies. Educomp Macwin McElectronics
Capacity 700 700 1000
Fixed Cost $45,000 $35,000 $50,000
Variable Cost $750 $775 $700

The school board wants to determine the minimum-cost plan for meeting its computer needs.

a. Formulate a BIP model in algebraic form for this problem.
b. Formulate and solve this model on a spreadsheet.