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The Rules of Thumb For Tech Purchasing
Hugh Pickens writes "Sam Grobart writes in the NYT that buying gadgets can sometimes be like buying a car; it requires sorting through options because the reality is that most of us are usually dealing with a finite amount of money to spend, and that means making trade-offs. Grobart puts forward his set of rules for getting the most for your tech dollar when buying computers, cameras, cellphones, data plans, and service contracts. For example, Rule No. 1: pay for PC memory, not speed. 'When buying and configuring a new computer, companies often give the option of upgrading the processor and adding more memory, or RAM. If it is an either/or proposition, go for the RAM,' writes Grobart. 'Processors are usually fast enough for most people; it is the RAM that can be the bottleneck.' Other rules include 'Pay for the messaging, not the minutes,' 'Pay for the components, not the cables,' 'Pay for the sensor size, not the megapixels,' and 'Pay for the TV size, not the refresh rate.' Kevin Kelly expands on Grobart's rules of thumb with 'Pay for the glass, not the shutters,' 'Pay for reliability, not mileage,' and 'Pay for comfort, not for weight.' Any others?"
"Decide what you want to do with it, then buy exactly what you need"
It sounds stupid, but you have no idea how many people buy a laptop or something without knowing whether they want to run high-end games or just use it for browsing the internet and then they end up with something overly expensive with traits they don't need.
Most high end brand name desktops already come with "too much" RAM as standard, often 6 or 8GB.
As long as Windows applications are almost universally 32bit, this is pointless. As long as the system has 4GB, the rest is "nice to have for future", nothing more.
Right about CPUs tho, in desktops they range from very fast to ridiculously fast. Laptops, on the other hand, are another story. Cheapest laptop CPUs are pretty puny...
#1 rule, no matter what you buy. Plasma vs. LCD, car vs. SUV vs. truck, laptop vs. desktop, handgun vs. rifle vs. shotgun, or even rent/lease vs. own.
If you don't know your real requirements for a purchase, then you're just shooting in the dark, or have already made up your mind based on peer pressure. The best example of sheer peer pressure/brand pushing can probably be best summarized within 80% of Apple sales. The other 20% actually know what they're buying and actually need it.
"Don't buy a house more than 3x your annual income."
Probably could have saved us some troubles back there.
Simple. For software, pay for the support+license, not the license.
.sig withheld by request
Shop Electronically, Buy Locally. Do the research at home and take it with you to brick-and-mortal stores. If worse comes to worse, Buy Electronically, Return Locally. By doing this mistakes are easily corrected.
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
The summary claims that one rule is to pay for more RAM over better processor. That sounds like poor advice for at least three reasons: 1) RAM can usually be user-upgraded later, while the processor usually can't be; 2) RAM is cheaper than the processor; 3) some OEMs overcharge for RAM upgrades (cough, Apple). Plus, it is dubious to claim processors are usually fast enough for most people. All told, whoever offered that suggestion wasn't thinking very soundly.
I disagree. A better processor means you get a 2.7 instead of a 2.4, and for that you pay $300 (Apple Macbook Pro 13"). That's a waste of money for 10% speed increase. Then I would use that money to buy more RAM, which is probably a much better way to speed up a machine.
Read TFA, not TFS.
You realise that the article is rules of thumb, which themselves are summaries of accepted wisdom, right?
If anything, going by this article it should be RTFS not RTFA.
Or you could just actually take the effort to understand the tradeoffs you're making instead of following a set of vague general rules which aren't suited to each situation... If it's important, it's worth getting the detail right. Think brain surgery - do you want your brain surgeon ignoring the detail and applying a set of shortcut rules of thumb?
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I also find that most people who do go for the "emotional" buy, rather than the technical buy, will often be reluctant to tell you the real reason they bought something. Usually the sales/marketing material that they quote afterwards is merely an excuse or rationalisation for their decision. Usually the reason people buy tech is because it makes them feel good. Nothing more.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I find this statement to be true more for computer monitors than for television screens. Too many people end up with TV screens so large that the individual pixels become annoyingly visible. HD mitigates this, but most channels still use SD.
Pick a TV screen size that's appropriate for your viewing distance, instead of the bigger == better fallacy.
For example - "Pay for RAM, not speed. The speed of the computer chip does not matter; the attention-span or RAM memory does matter."
Totally wrong. You can always throw in more ram at a later date, and it will probably cost less to replace all of it than the cost of the "upgrade" today. Upgrading ram on a laptop is even easier than on a desktop, while a cpu upgrade ... forget it. And you'll always find takers for your old ram.
Or "Pay for components, not cables. Buy the best components, and the cheapest cables". While you don't have to pay a monster price for "Monster Cables", some HDMI cables don't meet the latest specs. The difference between those that do and the cheapest may only be a few bucks, and it can't hurt.
Or "Pay for speed, not channels. For cable internet, with enough speed you can watch TV channels on the internet for free." Pay for bandwidth. Speed means nothing if you have a low bandwidth cap. And buying a pair of bunny-ears for your HDTV can give a better picture over the air than either the net OR cable.
And "Pay for reliability, not mileage. On a car, you'll spend more of repairs and maintaince over its lifetime than you will on a difference in gas." needs to re-think that when faced with $6-$8 a gallon gas prices. At $6 a gallon, 20mpg is going to cost you $30,000.00 in gas over 100,000 miles. At 40mpg you save $15,000.00
And for those who don't think gas prices will go that high, they already are in many parts of the world (and you can bet that cash-strapped state and federal governments are going to need to raise more taxes).
Think of how many people bought their cars when gas prices were half what they were today. When buying a car today, you have to keep in mind that history tends to repeat itself.
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
Psh - active studo reference monitors, connected to your high quality mixing board via XLR cables. :P