I may be cheaper than you, with vehicles anyway. Up until 3 years ago when I got a 98 Ford Ranger 4X4, I drove a 1976 Chevy pickup. Almost 350 thousand miles on that thing!
This is a true story (very unusual on this forum): In 1998 I bought my son a Toshiba Satellite Laptop full retail at CompUSA for $2,000. In 2000, Toshiba had to pay class action suit so I got $250 check and $250 towards future purchase so I bought a Toshiba cable modem with the $250. He used that laptop 14 hours a day for 5 years. Eventually the hard drive went and I replaced it myself for about $100. Here comes the good part. For a bet my son bet me I couldn't destroy the damn thing. So I jumped on the closed computer 10 times- leap up in the air and land on it- over and over again. At least ten times. I won the bet right? Screen destroyed for sure, right? NO WAY! Still worked perfectly. I recently took a 2 lb. hammer to the hard drive and tossed it in the trash cause it was dirt slow- but still working. Yeah Toshiba are p.o.s.! The funny part is I bought a $100 laptop bag so when we traveled it wouldn't get bumped and screw up the screen. Michael: Most of the stores you mentioned have a 15% restocking fee and/or a short return time like 2 weeks. Costco will let you buy computer equipment and return it after 6 months. Frye's Electronics will let you test drive for 30 days without a restocking fee. I have purchased tons of computer stuff online with no problems. Recently bought 2 Viewsonic flat screens- arrived without one pixel being bad. I like Viewsonics because they have 3 year warranty. I had one that I purchased from CompUSA ( after buying 4 different ones in 4 different stores until I had an "acceptable level" of bad pixels) go bad due to my fault. I sent it back to them and got basically a new one. It's 5 years old. Yeah I used to be cheap and "valued money" too until I got rich. Then suddenly all my eccentricities vanished. Imagine that! That's the real value of money- being able to afford stuff.
You guys are buying $500 laptops there is a big difference. But laptops are extremely flaky Dont buy acer Flaky as hell. Relibaility is still shown in IBM / FUJITSU My current acer laptop just broke good thing I have backup.
takenoprosoners... Wifey read your post and told me ...see I told you so! You jump over 100 dollar bills to pick up pennies! But seriously if I had a lot of money to where I felt I were rich, I do not think it would change me....I don't think. I once owned two homes in Sweden in fancy areas and it did not change me... Now all my money goes our retirement plan to compound....Every Penny...(I have a jar for those coins that I find on the street). Since I have a place for all my money and a vision, it really does not get spent on anything. I recently bought two 19" Samsung LCD's that will last me for several years. I might buy another Desktop next year, I do not know yet. I might get a cable connection for a backup to DSL...but thats whats on my list. Wifey has a Hummer and a Big House in California on her list.....shit Costco and Sams Club are my favorite membership stores....never any questions asked there.... Michael B.
Never owned a laptop but as far as PCs go I'll never buy a preassembled computer again. In 2001 I bought a HP Pavilion with an Athlon 1600 and 512 MBs of RAM from Sams Club for $900. It worked fine for about 6 months, then I started getting blue screen errors. "IRQL not less or equal", "Unmountable boot volume" and a BIOS error. Spent many hours on the phone with HP tech support in India. USELESS!. Started researching it on my own. Found that the Unmountable Boot Volume error is fixed by installing XPpro service pack 1 but in my case that it won't take until I flash the BIOS. After performing several tests suggested in the MS knowledge based articles that the IRQL error was a physical memory failure. I went back to Sam's Club and was told that I have to deal with HP. So. I call Hp again. Have to go through level 1 cust. service then passed to level 2 cust service, then passed to level 1 tech support, then passed to level 2 tech support before I find someone that has even heard of these errors. Have to explain the situation and let them try to help me at each stage. They will not pass you to the next level until they try. So, I ask HP for the BIOS ID string so that I can flash the BIOS. They flat out refuse to give it to me. All they do is repeat over and over "Take it to a HP authorized dealer". I tell them "I don't have the extended warranty and I accept all responsibility for the computer. Please just give me the bios ID string." Their response - "Take it to a HP authorized dealer." BTW- HP authorized dealers charge $75 per hour with a 1 hour minimum. It takes 5 minutes to flash the BIOS. I also found out that when you buy a box deal from any of the big manufacturers, they pitch a good processor but don't tell you that although the mother board and memory are a brand you recognize, it's printed on generic wafer board and they use cheap architecture. My system was running hotter than it should and the FSB and mem. was 133MHz. So, my 1.42 GHz processor that can handle a FSB and memory at 266 MHz was bottle necking at 133 MHz. But. all's well that ends well. Told HP to go F@ck themselves and bought a new mother board and DDR memory. I've no problems since then.
You're following Einstein's theory of compound interest. That's too slow for me- like watching grass grow. As far as retirement goes I thought I had discovered the next thing since sliced bread, the Roth IRA account. I came out of retirement (living off passive income) to work for 5 years to put enough EARNED money in a Roth so I could trade tax free for life. I had a marvelous plan! Yeah right! Went around to all these people's houses getting their software straightened out. (I did meet a lot of nice people and made many friends). Turns out if you actually trade frequently and make a lot of money you're penalized more than the 23% tax rate. Maybe not this year or the next but they'll come after you IF you make real money from trading. So what's the use? You'll wind up paying 40% plus all the interest. The hell with retirement! Make enough to have enough NOW. How do you know you'll even be around in 10 years? You might get hit by a bus.
takenoprisoners... Well your points are good. I find myself at a loss for words and this is rare...but the compounding thing I will defend...it works...at least the way I do it...Compounding bought this Condo....now she is building it back up for the house and the hummer...(I am keeping the 1990 ply Voy sim woo...) Wifey is at the age she can withdraw from her traditional IRA without penalty. We really need something in there and I should get mine open...but I am 47 and use Wifeys IRA until I need more Tax write-offs and then I will need to open mine...We have not gone the Roth route... Michael B.
The big problem is getting a decent hard drive. IBM sold out to Fujitsu so the only dependable hard drive is a SCCI IBM and then you need a controller. People don't understand that computers run only as fast as the hard drive. Most store brands run very slow and are crap. A lot more than ram and cpu speed.
Is there a noticable difference between 7k rpm's and 10k rpm's? I want to get a shuttle box and build it at New-Egg....