What I Learned From Buying a Laptop and How It Can Save You Money
March 06, 2013I walked into my local Best Buy and knew I wanted it as soon as I saw it. It was beautifully designed, sleek, and looked like the laptop of the future. It weighed only two pounds. And it was a pleasure to navigate using the touchpad, which perfectly synched the movement of the on-screen cursor to the movement of my fingers. Unfortunately, it was also manufactured by Apple, which meant that purchasing this laptop, the Macbook Air, would set me back at least $1,000.
I agonized about whether the advantages of the MacBook Air over its clunkier-looking Windows competitors were worth the cost. I research, discussed, and debated the pros and cons endlessly with friends and family. Then, just as I had decided to plunge into the deep end and bring Apple and iTunes into my life, a friend suggested I look into a new product called a Chromebook. “What’s a Chromebook?” I asked.
As I soon learned, a Chromebook is a new laptop with an operating system designed by Google to allow you to access the Internet and do anything you can do on the web. But offline activities are limited – you’re not able to install or run programs, and the hard drive is too small to store much on the machine itself. The upside is that Google promises its stripped-down laptop will deliver a fast and efficient performance, it offers plenty of online storage for your documents, music, and photos, and it has an unbeatable price – a mere $250.
I was concerned about my laptop not being useful without an Internet connection, but I knew that almost everything I used my desktop computer for anyway involved accessing the Internet. I decided to test it out in the showroom and was immediately impressed. The Chromebook is designed to mimic the Macbook Air so it has a similar look and similar feel when you use it. The keyboards look nearly identical. The touchpad seemed almost the same, and I’ve read that it is 80% as good as the Macbook Air’s touchpad. It’s equally as portable and lightweight at just under 2.5 pounds.
Granted, it didn’t feel as fancy or luxurious as the Macbook Air; the casing is made from plastic whereas the Macbook Air is made from aluminum, and the desktop screen interface is much simpler. But instead of agonizing over my choice, I reasoned for only $250, there’s not much risk in giving this a try. (I didn’t consider the iPad since it’s difficult to create documents like this article I’m typing right now using a touch screen device).
Having owned one now for two months, I can say it’s a great purchase that’s lived up to its promise to be a speedy and efficient machine that accomplishes web-based tasks with ease. Anything I was worried I might need offline capability to do – creating, accessing, editing, or saving documents, spreadsheets, presentations, photos, music, and videos – can be online (and to an extent offline) through platforms Google has created for these purposes. It boots up in seven seconds or less, and I can keep at least fifteen browser tabs open without seeing a decrease in speed, which remain open even if you turn the machine off and then back on. And with the online storage, I can open anything I save by accessing the Internet from anywhere.
Besides finding a cheaper solution to my tech needs, I learned two very important lessons from this experience to help me make better spending choices in the future. The first and more obvious one is that when buying something, don’t pay more for a top of the line item with extra features even if it’s a better product if a cheaper item with less “extras” will adequately suit you just fine. The Macbook Air may be a better computer, but I’d argue that unless you work in an industry that requires special software or you’re an avid gamer that needs a faster processor, the vast majority of us can save a lot of money by recognizing that we simply aren’t ever going to use most of what a Macbook Air can do.
I had to re-learn this lesson when shopping for the modem for my computer. I was tempted by the $100 modem because of all of its special features and a belief that it was more expensive so after all, it “had to be better.” Yet I ultimately chose a very simple $20 modem with less features and it works just fine.
This applies not just to purchasing a product, but to any spending decision we make. For example, when I first moved out of my parent’s house to live on my own, I wanted to live in a “hip” neighborhood with the vision that I’d be attending wild parties every night (or at least on the weekends). I was willing to pay a premium for housing to live in such an area, even though I often prefer just to hang out with friends and hadn’t in fact gone to many parties in the preceding year living at home. I stubbornly pushed ahead.
Yet in the year and a half in which I lived there, I sadly report that I did not attend a single wild party. Living in a hip area commands a higher price because it adds value to those who will benefit from it. For me, however, I realized that there was no reason to spend thousands of dollars extra a year on housing to be near something which I was unlikely to take advantage.
The second lesson I learned is more subtle. I think a large reason we overpay to buy things with extra features we’re not going to use is that we simply enjoy the luxurious feeling of having an expensive product. Whatever a Macbook Air’s processing power is, what initially won me over was its beautiful appearance and perfect response touchpad; in short, the feeling of luxury that it gave me. For the same reason, we will significantly overpay for a fancy car or gourmet food to experience that feeling of luxury, even if there’s no significant functional difference to us over non-expensive options.
Paying for a luxury version of something can be often be many times more expensive than the initial price to buy the cheaper option. You should ask yourself whether the luxury thing you’re buying will be as equally valuable to you in extra enjoyment or happiness. For example, a few months ago, my wife and a few friends opted to splurge on a dinner at a luxury restaurant. It was a prix fixe meal that cost us $40 per person, not including drinks, tax, or tip. I confess I had a great time and really enjoyed the food and service. But if the enjoyment of going out to eat is primarily in not having to do the cooking yourself and having social time with your friends, is the luxury experience of a $40 gourmet meal four times as enjoyable as going out to eat for a $10 meal?
Similarly, I live in a neighborhood full of landmarked buildings and historic architecture, where a studio apartment can cost you at least $300,000, or more. My building is a non-landmarked building that allows me to enjoy all the amenities my neighborhood has to offer – including daily walks to gape at the historic architecture around me – yet a studio in my building is priced at only $175,000. As much as I love the historic buildings around me, it’s hard to justify a $125,000 luxury premium just to live in the exact same neighborhood.
If we can learn not to opt for expensive items when we don’t need them and resist the temptation to pay for luxury when it’s significantly more expensive, we’ll be well on our way to saving more money. Who knew you could learn so much from buying a $250 laptop?