electrocomputerwarehouse

Lennart Sorensen lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org
Fri May 27 17:46:11 UTC 2011


On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 01:18:58PM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
> It depends how important price is to you.  If you listen to Lennart,
> you will always pay more and get a higher quality device.

I paid $900 for my new thinkpad 2 years ago.  It has been an amazing
machine so far.  Well worth it.

> I'm impressed by the price-performance of many new notebooks these
> days.  One side-effect of "inexpensive" is that the products may be
> flimsy -- electronic components get less expensive most of the time but
> mechanical components don't.

My wife has an EeepC 1008HA (the very thin one), which she likes, but it
is a bit flimsy.  In fact she has two (she broke the keyboard somehow
on the first one when it was a year and a half old, and bought another
on sale at the time).  Recently the hinge broke off the new one, so we
swapped the top half of the old one onto the new one.  She now has a
half pink and half black EeePC.  The netbooks are practically getting
into the disposable computers price range (and durability).

I don't personally want an EeePC.  I find them impossible to work with,
but my wife likes hers.  Of course she can always ssh to her desktop to
do real work from either the EeePC or her symbian phone.

> I think that used and off-lease computers made a lot more sense when
> new ones were way more expensive than they are now.  I remember a
> considerable period during which I knew a desktop computer would cost
> be about $2000, all that changed was what it could do for that money.
> For example, my Kaypro II cost $2295 -- a Z80 with 64k and two floppy
> drives.

A new one can have the features you want, and warrenty, and a brand
new battery.

> Come to think of it, my current desktop cost ~$2k, but that's because
> about $1100 was my 30" monitor.  Sure beats my Kaypro (24x80 character
> 9" mono screen).  Over that 30 years, the CPU has increased more than
> 1000-fold and RAM capacity about 100,000 but the screen has improved
> more like 10.

$1100 for a 30" is amazing, when you consider a 21" CRT was $3000 a
decade ago.

I remember having a giant 213MB harddisk and 16MB of ram.  I have 4GB
ram in my laptop and 320GB harddisk and it cost a lot less too.  Now if
only disk speeds would improve a bit quicker.

> A used computer is so cheap these days that the store overhead has 
> to significantly add to the price.
> 
> New notebooks come with a better warranty than used ones.  I think
> that warranties are particularly useful with notebooks since they are
> harder to fix yourself.
> 
> I posted a netbook deal which is still on (barely) for $239.99.  I think 
> that I'd pick that over a used d620 at the same price.  Lennart clearly 
> explained why neither is up to his standards.

I don't like things that break. :)

-- 
Len Sorensen
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