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Tech on the Cheap?
andyatkinson asks: "A technology enthusiast always has more products and services to buy than he or she can possibly afford. A variety of methods will help you save money: discount, deal, and coupon websites, price comparisons, eBay, and rebates. How do you save bucks on tech?"
The latest and greatest is seldom so great. Now is a great time to buy a GameCube or PS2 if you don't have one. All the good games have been made and are available for bargain basement rates. Also, at my home we have several old Macs that we use for the wife & kids. We find them more than adequate for our purposes. I guess it all comes down to learning to be content with getting things later rather than sooner.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
"In one 9 month period, I bought and sold 5 laptops, taking a loss of around $200-300 per sale, before settling on one to keep. This is a bit extreme and certainly involved a fair amount of hassle, but on the plus side, I was able to try out several brand new laptops on my own terms, and sell them for a relatively minimal loss. After about 9 months, I still had a new laptop for around US $1500 (as opposed to leasing laptops)."
Given the conservative estimate of $200 loss per purchase, that would $1000. That would mean that at the end he either had a $1500 laptop for $2500, or else he bought a $500 laptop for $1500. Either way this is not "Tech on the Cheap."
Insert Generic Sig Here:
Don't buy into a new technology for the first couple of years unless it is immediately apparent the item will repay your money over a 1-year time frame. Generally it takes 3 years for the rapid advancement period to come to a conclusion and product lines to stabilize. You will also avoid a lot of fads this way.
Avoid any proprietary formats - MD Disc, Blu-Ray, DVD-Audio. These never work out in the long run.