Laptop purchasing strategies

[mirhagk]

A friend recently proposed an idea to me that sounded intriguing. Not sure whether it's a good idea or not, but curious for anybody's input.

Basically the concept is that instead of buying $1800 machines that will still be decent in 3 years, you buy a $600 machine, and replace it every year.

It gets interesting when you factor in second hand resale as well. A $600 machine can probably go for $300 after a year (not sure on this, correct me if I'm wrong), meaning you end up spending $300 a year on computers, and always have something that's pretty decent, and within a year old.

I personally am going to stick with my current plan (buy a new laptop every 3 years, and a new PC every 3 years, switching every 1.5 years, higher end [like $1500 or so])

Why do you guys think? And do you have any plans for when/what machines you buy? I'd like to hear them

[ProgrammingFun]

Doesn't really work if you're a gamer or computer power freak

[mirhagk]

well you could just use this for your laptop, or even possibly go cheaper, and make a good home computer. That you can upgrade and replace parts with, and home computers don't go through anywhere as much abuse as laptops.

[2goto1]

Not sure how accurate you can strategize your purchasing for the best balance of computing power and cost per year since there are a lot of unknowns, but you can estimate how much you might get for reselling a 3 year old laptop by seeing how much 3 year old laptops list for today on craigslist.

My plan is usually to keep my laptop until it becomes too inefficient to do what I need it to do, rather than buy newer tech simply because of advertised marketing features (then it becomes more of a want). I outgrew my last laptop due to some projects that were taking 1 1/2 - 2 minutes to open, rebuild, and retest. That became too much wasted time for me. I had my last laptop for about 1 1/2 years. I upgraded at the start of this year to a 1st gen I7, 8GB RAM, SSD, and half decent graphics, with the hope that it will still operate efficiently for me in 2 years time. So far it's still running like a charm.

I got rid of my desktop a long time ago because it wastes space, it wasn't mobile, I didn't significantly benefit from any of the additional resources that it offered, I didn't use it differently from my laptops, and I had to maintain 2 computers for myself. Most higher end laptop graphics cards suit my occasional gaming use perfectly fine.

[mirhagk]

Yeah I'm actually wondering about a desktop computer. I move around a lot, and when I'm in university I will be at school, at my apartment, and at my house pretty much equal times, so the desktop may not be useful. Nice part about a desktop though is that it lasts a lot longer than a laptop, and you can upgrade and replace parts. Usually the harddrive is the thing that slows down and causes computers to become horrendously slow. With a desktop, you can simply pop in a new harddrive, and still keep the old harddrive for backup or as an extra storage drive.

[2goto1]

I wouldn't buy the desktop from the sound of it - YAGNI! Laptop hard drives can be upgraded, although graphics cards are often not upgradeable. Some laptops also have 2 drive bays in addition to the optical drive. Getting a higher end laptop with SSD storage will definitely help with the hard drive getting slow issue.

[mirhagk]

Yeah my current laptop has 2 drive bays, with 2 hybrid drives. Once the computer starts to slow down I will probably just buy an ssd and replace one of the 2 drives.

However the graphics card thing is somewhat important, because besides hard drives, graphics cards are pretty much the only other thing I'd upgrade. If I can make the computer run just as fast as it used to by keeping the hard drive up to date, then I'd just have to keep the graphics card up to date to play current gen games. Like what if a new elder scrolls comes out