Laptop Purchase Philosophy
Entry posted by ubikuberalles
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Which is the better way to buy a laptop: Buy it fully loaded or get it in a standard (or cheap) configuration and then upgrade it later?
When I bought my very first laptop in 1993, I adhered to the later methodology (buy it cheap), mostly because I didn't have much funds and I didn't want to rack up a huge credit card bill. So I looked through some magazines and bought a laptop from a mail order company in Ohio. I ended up buying a Windows 3.1 machine that had a 20MHz 386 CPU with a B+W LCD display, 120 MB disk drive and 4 MB of RAM. That machine cost me about $1700. If I bought it fully loaded (color LCD, 500 Mb disk drive and a lot more memory), I would have spent at least $2400. Way out of my price range (I wanted to keep my laptop cost below $2000 which is why I went with a windows box instead of a Mac laptop).
At first I was quite happy with the computer and felt that my "buy it cheap" strategy was working. It was my very first Windows machine (I was a die hard Atari computer user until then) and I was learning a lot. I bought Borland's Paradox database software, Microsoft's C++ package (version 1.0) and a bunch of games and stuff and that kept me busy for at least a year. However, after a while the 120 MB disk was getting full. I was very reluctant to replace the drive. First, a 240 MB drive was very expensive. Second, there was no easy access panel to the drive: I would have to take apart the laptop or bring it to a shop. Taking it apart was not an option as I was afraid I'd break it (I've taken apart other, cheaper, computers and occasionally damaged them) and I was not willing to take the risk with a $1700 laptop. Taking it to the shop was expensive too.
At this point I had doubts about my "buy it cheap" philosophy. Upgrades were expensive and the manufacturer didn't offer discounts for upgrading a machine you bought from them (a silly assumption I made when I first got the laptop).
I coped with the lack of disk space by saving files to floppy and deleting stuff I didn't need that much. After I had the laptop for two years, I had to replace the disk drive anyway: the drive failed. The replacement disk was a 500 MB disk and it cost $500. Since I had to bring the laptop to the shop for the replacement disk, I also had them upgrade the memory to 8 MB. This big expense to repair and upgrade the computer convinced me that the "buy it fully loaded" method was perhaps the best (even though I probably still would have had to replace a failed disk). The initial cost would be big but at least I won't be nickel and dimed to death over the years.
Keep in mind that I only used this "buy it cheap" / "Buy it fully loaded" dichotomy with regards to laptops. Upgrading desktops is easy since they were designed to be serviced easily and the parts were a lot cheaper and standardized compared to laptops. I bought a used desktop a couple years after I got the laptop and I routinely replaced parts and upgraded the system: the parts were cheap. After five years I essentially replaced every part of the desktop and only the original case was left. Laptops are lot more expensive and a lot harder to upgrade and service.
In 1997 the motherboard of the laptop died and I essentially trashed the system (basically I took it apart to see how it was built. I also salvaged the disk drive as a backup device for my desktop). I was done with laptops for the time being. I was happy with my desktop and didn't have a strong need for a laptop. Nevertheless, I had firmly decided that if I ever buy another laptop, I'll buy it fully loaded.
Back in the spring of 2006 I decided I need a laptop for my school work. I had intended to use the "buy it fully loaded" philosophy but my funds were limited and I reluctantly went for the "buy it cheap" method. I ended up getting a Compaq Presario with a 1.8 GHz Sempron, 512 MB of RAM and a 40 GB disk drive. It also came with wireless built in. The whole thing cost about $700. A thousand dollars cheaper than my first laptop and about 90 times faster with 64 times the RAM and over 300 times the disk space. My how times have changed. It was a good deal but, still, I wasn't happy with buying it cheap instead of getting it fully loaded but I felt I had no choice at the moment.
Six months later I discovered that my "buy it cheap" bird came home to roost: I had to upgrade the memory. I had bought the Adobe suite and it required 512 MB minimum or it wouldn't even install in my computer. I thought I had the minimum memory but it turns out that the built-in video card consumed 128 Mb of that 512 MB of memory. I had to upgrade to 1 GB before I could install the Adobe suite. I thought I'd end up spending more for the upgrade than I would if I bought the laptop with the 1 GB in the first place.
Turns out that the upgrade cost the same or even less than what I would have spent if I bought the laptop with the extra memory in the first place. Since the laptop was designed to make it easy to upgrade memory (in stark contrast to my first laptop), I installed the memory myself and avoided a service charge. Last week I replaced my 40 GB drive with a 120 GB drive. The new drive only cost $90. There is NO WAY a 120 GB drive would have cost that little 18 months ago.
As you can see, buying my new laptop cheap actually saved me money in the long run. I am now firmly entrenched in the "buy it cheap" methodology when it comes to buying laptops.
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