I'm in the market for a new machine (orginal machine is over 5 years old and definitely needs to be replaced) and I was looking at some good Lease vs. Buy deals. The way I see it, I'm offseting a lot of obsolecence risk by renting, as well as getting the more powerful machine at a decent price. I think it's a good idea, what do you think?
I would think you would have to determine what you wanted up front, without any other modifications to be made to the system. To tell you the truth, I don't even know if it's really feasible ... just trying to figure-out how to get around the high cost of putting together a good machine which is going to be obsolete in 16 months anyway.
My advice on trading machines, is spend as little money as possible to get the best bang for the buck you can. If you know how to put it together yourself, you can get a 3 or 4gb barebones system for between $150 - $200, and you can add a 1tb hard drive for less that $100 and a cd-rom for between $12 - $25. What else could you possibly need? The problem with paying a lot of money for a machine right now, is that in a few years a whole bunch of new things will be the new standard. USB 3.0 is supposed to be available sometime in 2010, later this summer solid state hard drives are going to finally start coming down to a reasonable price point, and we're on the verge on transitioning from a 32bit world to a 64bit world, as Microsoft has already stated that Windows 7 is going to be their last 32bit OS. Back in 1998, when the average computer sucked (as did broadband), I think it made a lot of sense to pay big bucks for a trading machine and there were definitely some convincing arguments for leasing vs. buying since you can deduct 100% of your lease payments (assuming its a business lease) as an expense vs. having to depreciate the value of it over time on your taxes (although I think the IRS has a rule that lets you take a 1 time write off up front, but I'm not a tax expert). But nowadays, computers are so powerful and so cheap that I think paying big bucks is a bit of a sucker's game. And as a side note, I know a few guys who work for some big names in the tech industry. A few weeks ago, I was thinking of adding 16gb of RAM to my machine so I could get a little ahead of the technology curve. So I asked a few of them, how much memory do you think will be "standard" in 5 to 10 years? Most of them said 64gb to 128gb. Their position is that we're moving (rather rapidly) towards a point where the average computer will have as much RAM as the first generation of SSD's. Now they may be right or wrong, I have no idea, but I doubt that whatever you buy today, no matter how much you pay for it, is going to last you that long. Just my 2 cents.
bang for your buck is always good. Look at teir2 or teir3 parts, not top of the line, but close to the top. What I mean is look at the top of the line chip, and get the 2nd best or third best. You pay too large of a premium for top of the line while teir2 or teir3 will be 90% of the power, but 50% cheaper. Those are usually the best bang for your buck, imo.
Thats a great point... Processors are a good example... Quite often you end up paying 30 or 40% more for a CPU thats 10 or 20% faster. I typically look for the processors that have the largest FSB, and then buy the slowest one out of the bunch. Stuff like that can save you a lot.
The only way to determine which is better, lease or buy, you gotta know the numbers, which you haven't provided. That said, it's rare that a lease is better than a buy. And, depending on the amount of the purchase, the entire thing can be written off on your taxes in the year of purchase. You can get a Dell Precision T-3400 that will do everything you need to do at a reasonable price. OldTrader
This won't happen overnight and it is always the case that something better is coming out. By this argument, you should never buy a computer and just keep waiting as something better is just around the corner. If you buy now and take care of the machine and make a couple minor upgrades in a couple of years you should be fine for at least 5 years. Just make sure your computer is ready for 64bit.
I never said don't buy a computer... I said don't pay a lot of money for a computer and try to get good value because it will probably not be worth too much in a few years. I just put together a 64-bit 2.8ghz machine with 4gb of ram and a 1tb hard drive for less than $400. All I suggested was not spending much more than that.