Thread: How many $$ for a new PC?

Originally Posted by Slunnie

Is that because a 386 doesn't do games?

It'll do Minesweeper.

My desktop is a new i5 processor based machine. The graphics card is an nVidia GeForce 8800GTS that was in Bucko's box of tricks. I probably don't need it but I had it. The old desktop was an ASUS Maximus Formula (Special Edition) gaming mobo that Bucko had bought but not used. It started to play up hence the need for a new mobo.

My laptop is a secondhand 3 year old i7 processor HP unit that cost me $225 a month back. New, it was closer to $2,500.

I just built a PC for photography. $2k excluding the monitor, keyboard and mouse. Screams along

Originally Posted by vnx205

I have always maintained that you can stay closer to the bleeding edge for less money if you buy a level or two below top of the range or if you buy last year's model.

My argument is that if you spend top dollar for the latest and greatest, it might be three or four years before you can afford to update or before you can persuade the Minister for Finance that you need to upgrade. So you have spent a lot of money and towards the end, you were using a computer that was about four years out of date.

If you bought a two year old machine, it would probably cost one quarter the price of a new one, so you could probably afford to upgrade to another cheap two year old machine in a year or two. Even if you had to wait two years to upgrade, you would still only be using a four year old machine. In other words by buying down the price or age range a bit, you still never had an older machine than if you had spent up big on brand new.

Since I don't play games, I can take that philosophy even further. Each of my last three computers cost $0 because someone was getting rid of them so they could run the latest version of Windows. I just install Linux and get quite satisfactory performance doing the sort of tasks that the vast majority of users do.

As I haven't invested a small fortune in the computer, I can quite readily discard it and upgrade when someone else decides that a four or five year old computer isn't good enough for them.

Of course if you want to play games, that approach probably isn't an option. If you only need the computer to do productive work, it is quite a cost effective approach.

your way you start off with a previous generation machine that just gets older.

Buying a bleeding edge machine means the machine is up to date for at least one generation, and, more importantly, will kick your machines ass every year for 4 years

You haven't followed my logic.

If you buy new, it will be a year out of date in twelve months. By the time you can afford to replace it, it could be four or five years old.

if you buy one year old, for less money you could replace it after a year with another one year old machine, so you have never had to work with a machine that is more than two years old.

If you had slashed out on this years's model, then half the time you had it, it was over two years old.

So for less money, the average age of the machine you own would be lower if you resisted the temptation to buy a brand new "latest and greatest" machine.

For the same long term budget, buying new, top of the line means that on average, the machine you use is older than the average age of the machines bought second hand.

Originally Posted by Pedro_The_Swift

your way you start off with a previous generation machine that just gets older.

Buying a bleeding edge machine means the machine is up to date for at least one generation, and, more importantly, will kick your machines ass every year for 4 yearsNo it won't!

Year one you have a brand new machine, I have a one year old machine. Yours beat mine.

Year two you have a one year old machine, I have a two year old machine. Yours beat mine.

Year three, you have a two year old machine, I have bought another one year old machine. Mine beats yours.

Year four, you have a three year old machine, mine is still only two years old and thrashes yours.

You win two years and I win two years.

After all that, I still have a lot more money in my pocket than you. In fact in the fourth year, I could have bought another one year old machine and still be ahead financially.

Originally Posted by incisor

i think gaming drives the innovation .....

Back when I was studying programming (and we could fit cutting edge programs on a floppy disk) it was still the same.

Latest hardware comes out, programmers can leverage the speed or other gains, hardware advantage lost so the manufacturer ups the ante, programmers rub their hands in glee...

It's a vicious circle.

Originally Posted by vnx205

Year one you have a brand new machine, I have a one year old machine. Yours beat mine.

Year two you have a one year old machine, I have a two year old machine. Yours beat mine.

Year three, you have a two year old machine, I have bought another one year old machine. Mine beats yours.

Year four, you have a three year old machine, mine is still only two years old and thrashes yours.

You win two years and I win two years.

After all that, I still have a lot more money in my pocket than you. In fact in the fourth year, I could have bought another one year old machine and still be ahead financially.

your assumption is only correct IF you buy a one year old bleeding edge machine. unlikely, even after 12 months that machine will still be a lot more than you are willing to pay, even if you could find them,, they wont be advertised but sold on by word of mouth to friends,,,,,,

any second hand machine advertised is pretty much a 4 door falcon,,,,,

and if I could afford to build a bleeding edge machine once , I could afford to do it again,, its the same mindset as "must have" this years model motocross bike.

I think you may be right.

I guess I was thinking of machines a level or two below that. I accept that there are some people who genuinely need more computing power than their business rivals; there are some who choose to do things that require blazing speed; and there are some who simply have to own the latest thing whether they need it or not. I suspect those people make up a small minority of users.

I still think my argument might work if you move down the performance scale a bit.

Anyway in my case this is all a bit academic since even though I do quite a bit of work on my computer, including designing the wooden kayaks I build, the things I do can be done perfectly well on free, cast off five or six year old computers (as long as they are running some version of Linux ).