When to Buy Technology Goods?

inblosam asks: "I am about to make 'the switch', but the thought came to me that there may be a strategic time of year to purchase technology goods. Of course once you buy something it is nearly outdated already, but there must be some marketing cycle for lowering prices and releasing new toys. Anyone seen any patterns that may help? I do have one hypothesis: Companies push their products that have been on the market for 10-11 months during the holiday season (December), then afterwards drop the prices some and bump up the product with a new feature or size, etc. I believe this was the case for the iPod ($500 down to $300 ?), and even the Handspring Visor Edge was $300 when I bought it (November?) and then $169 three months later."

Comments

MacWorld

[TellarHK]

When you're looking at Apple purchases, try and keep the MacWorld schedules in mind. Usually MacWorld NY offers the 'big' updates and price shifts, but the other MacWorld events do too. It's a good idea to buy right after one, because prices aren't likely to change for a while.

Re:MacWorld

[guttentag]

When you're looking at Apple purchases, try and keep the MacWorld schedules in mind.

This used to be the standard, but Apple seems to be getting away from the "wow them at MacWorld/Apple Expo" model. Hardly anything new is is introduced there by Apple these last few shows...

1. The Apple Expo in Paris was held this week, but there was really nothing new there (in the past, Apple had used it as a supplemental stage to introduce new hardware in the fall between MacWorld NY and MacWorld SF -- and MacWorld Tokyo in the spring).
2. This summer's MacWorld NY introduced... what? Jaguar? Nope, it wasn't even ready until a month later, we knew it was coming before MacWorld began.
3. This last spring's MacWorld Tokyo gave us... (drumroll, please) a different size Apple LCD monitor? Woo-hoo...
4. When did Apple intro the all-dual-processor tower lineup? In between New York and Paris.

The updates come in between when Apple's ready to release them, which is really the way it should work.

Maybe this is just the strategy for navigating the stormy economy and we'll see Apple re-adhere to the old schedule at some point. But for now, don't pin any bets on MacWorld... it's more for the third parties than Apple these days. The latest crop of TiBooks was also introduced between shows.

I know a lot of people are talking about the mythical G5 ("It's going to be released at MacWorld SF in January"), but it's the same speculation before every show year after year. Don't believe any of it unless you happen to know that Motorola has finally gotten its rear in gear.

my general rule is

[sstory]

my general rule is to buy tech at least 1 or 2 yrs after it hits the market. Since I'm a student, I don't have money for cutting-edge, but I get last-year's cutting edge for half price, the initial bugs have been worked out (somewhat), and I can avoid what's been massively rejected. It depends on a) how fast the turnover is for the particular tech B) how much disposable income you have c) intangible factors like status and style, and how important that is to you.

The obvious - linewidth.

[Christopher Thomas]

For microprocessors and motherboards, prices are tied to the linewidth cycle.

A couple of months after a new linewidth becomes available, you get a few marginally higher-speed samples at a huge price.

Over the next six months, speed ramps up by a factor of 2 and prices drop on the older stuff. During this time any new chipsets introduced for the new hardware mature.

6 months after a linewidth switch, buy from the low end of the new speed grade range. You'll get a good price, and won't be obsolete for a year or more (as opposed to the usual 6 months).

There should be similar cycles for RAM (twice as fast, since they step lithography in cycles twice as fine), but in practice this isn't the case. Because margins are so thin, you get the occasional upset that drastically affects price (sometimes with help - the warehouse fire that quadrupled RAM prices a few years back only affected 3% of production capacity, according to rumour).

Processors are driven by linewidth, and motherboards are driven by processors, but most other things are market driven and so not as easy to predict. Other posters seem to have a better handle on this than I do :).

Buy when...

[Gefiltefish]

Buy an electronics product when you need it, or when it would make a substantial improvement in your quality of life.

Yes, prices usually drop somewhat after the winter holidays, but prices on most of today's consumer electronics will continue to go lower and lower as eqipment bought a few months ago becomes obselete because of the latest "advance." The solution: wait until you need something and buy it then. If you become obsessed with getting the best price on something and timing the market, you'll either never buy or drive yourself crazy.

A contrary opinion

[foobar104]

Several people have written and said that you should buy systems 1-2 years after they're first released to maximize reliability.

I've bought lots of Macs over the past 20 years, and since '95 or so I've seen a pattern develop. Here's my theory: buy the most expensive brand-new system you can afford at the instant you're ready to buy.

My first Mac laptop-- a PowerBook 160-- cost me $3,000, and I used it every day for five years. It was my primary-- only!-- machine until I bought my iMac. I regret that purchase, but only a little bit. Both of my iMacs were great, reliable little machines, and I never had a complaint about either of them, but I often wished I had bought machines with more oomph.

When the "speed holes" machines came out last month, I bought again. I found a friend who was willing to give me a few bucks for my iMac, and I plopped down $3,500 on a dual processor 1 GHz with a 17" studio display. It's fast, really fast, and it's got room to grow. I'll keep it for at least three years, I imagine.

But I know, and I accept, that Apple will release faster and better machines eight months or a year from now. It won't be too long before my top-o-the-line machine looks a little pale by comparison to the newest machines shipping. But that's not the point. The point is to get the very best system you can when you're ready to buy, and then be happy with it for as long as it takes to justify the purchase in your mind.

I've very sorry, inblosam

[anotherone]

Inblosam, I really hate to have to be the one to tell you this.

But, since you asked...

The entire technology industry monitors your activities. As soon as you purchase a product, we lower the price. Dramatically.

Again, I'm very sorry.

Re:Always a problem..

[sydlexic]

FYI, I just bought a new dual-1Ghz machine.

sh*t, so did I. I'm screwed.

Re:WTF are you talking about?

[Digital Believer]

I disagree--I'm reluctantly beginning to agree with the crowd that says "MHz don't matter for most of us." I used to think they were idiots--more power was always better. I bought a Dell Precision 420 dual-capable PIII-733 in September 2000 with Win2K and 256MB of RDRAM. I've since added the second processor, 512MB more RDRAM, and assorted minor toys. I'm still using a beautiful 19" Mitsubishi 900u monitor I bought in 1999. In twenty years, I've never before had a two-year old machine with so much life in it. I barely even drool over a dual-2.8GHz Xeon, even though it would almost triple the clock speed. Compare that to past two year upgrades:

1995: Pentium 120
1997: Pentium II 300
2000: Pentium III 733

I'm still throwing huge computing projects at this machine (complex maximum-likelihood statistical models with 100,000+ records), and nothing can choke up the combination of dual processors and plenty of RAM. This in spite of the fact that I had grave doubts about the Intel 840 platform and RDRAM given the public criticism at the time.

The bottom line: buy the best machine you can now, and you may be happy to keep it a very long time.