Selling Computers and the failure of Capitalisim.

[TheAnimus]

First off, as most of you know, I'm a fan of the free market economic idea, I'm a capitalist, the vast majority of my working life has been in Hedge Funds. So I'm used to seeing hard nosed capitalism at the coal face so to speak, and I damn well like it.

But, when trying to buy my mum a new laptop in a hurry, last time I was down at my parents, I really felt that capitalism completely fails.

There is a real chase to the bottom, all the laptops are next to each other, which price tags been the first thing a punter looks at. The result is people put in Large TFTs, or lots of RAM or fast CPUs. Yes there is time put in to the build quality so it looks good at first, but few in the I only love my parents £500 for a new laptop bracket are designed to stand the test of time, they will clearly have that discolouration effect where the wrist has been resting.

But on the face of it, its excellent, we where able to pick up a VAIO that has an environmentally friendly plastic that won't wear to badly, for ~£400. Plenty of RAM, fast HDD etc.

But then you switch it on. It has more slow moving parts than a girls only boarding school.

Google Desktop, Google Search, McAfee anti virus TRAIL, AOL........

All of a sudden it takes over two min just to reboot.

Because of the demand for the low price, they have taken the few cents which they will have made, just so they can be 50p less on the ticket.

Thats fine for me, simple wipe and I set up mums laptop for her (office, email etc) but for plenty of users this is just not going to happen. Their new machine is useless.

Why do they do this

We need some kind of brand, some sort of "lean and mean" sticker or something to show that it has a high performance tuned minimalist base.

[abaxas]

Anyone who beleives in the free market should understand that people are stupid and respond to marketing. I include myself in this, although I try not to.

The punter is happy to buy trash, so that is that people produce at that pricepoint.

[TheAnimus]

Yes but then you get the insaine markup stuff like Apple.

I'm a developer/systems architect/software architect/mathematician in my working life, which all to often takes over my whole life

As such computers play a hudge roll, but I'm a lazy cash rich user. I will buy office/windows happily.

I will pay a premium for small thing like a VAIO P series (built in data modem, weights like nothing.....) without any quarms.

I would pay for a support package with my linux, so that I don't have to bother with all the crap.

Yet I would not pay the size of a premium product like a mac book, because it simply dosen't have the junk installed. That seams counter intuitive to me.

[abaxas]

Yes but then you get the insaine markup stuff like Apple.

I'm a developer/systems architect/software architect/mathematician in my working life, which all to often takes over my whole life

As such computers play a hudge roll, but I'm a lazy cash rich user. I will buy office/windows happily.

I will pay a premium for small thing like a VAIO P series (built in data modem, weights like nothing.....) without any quarms.

I would pay for a support package with my linux, so that I don't have to bother with all the crap.

Yet I would not pay the size of a premium product like a mac book, because it simply dosen't have the junk installed. That seams counter intuitive to me.

As a mac user I have to defend!!

Never buy a full price mac, always wait for the refresh then buy a 'refurb' from the apple store.

You can expect it to be about 60-70% of it's original price.


But in terms of computing, people need to buy what they need, not what fits inside their pricepoint. Isn't that the same for the rest of the world?

[TheAnimus]

When I buy a new PC, I generally either have a need for it there and then (like mum, the 4 year old second hand collection of bits I'd put together whilst i was a student had finally died beyond easy repair).

Or I just *really* want it, and my conspicuous consumption has to be satisfied there and then!

I would have to really disagree thou, people buying PCs are normally limited by the pricepoint, there is a tiny minority of the population that find their needs are the limiting factors, but unless your a gamer, any £500 PC is really more than enough. A £380 PCWorld specail I was using not so long ago for 2 days for some dev work, it flawlessly performed.

[abaxas]

I think this might be your original point, but..

Why do people care about 'specs' what dont matter towards their required outcome? I always laugh when people mention 17 inch 'laptops', it's a desktop computer with a hinge!

People need a tool that does what they want, ie a spade that digs. However I guess most people dont know what they want espeically if kids are involved.

[Syllopsium]

Capitalism is working - it's the consumers that are failing. Consumers are not prepared to pay the cost of a bloated software free durable machine.

Given the fact that people buy on price and competition is intense, why is it a surprise that computers are loaded with **** that increases the manufacturer's wafer thin margins?

There are certainly some good machines out there - if you want a laptop, buy a Thinkpad. Thinkpads have a reasonable amount of bundled software, but it's a useful bundle to actually get work done, rather than sub par ****e.

[Sir Digby]

Surely you know that capitalism doesn't exist to serve customers?

[burn-e86]

surely for the average person a computer thats 5 years old would do? for the vast majority there really isn't any point in getting a computer thats got more then a dual core cpu. heck if they stayed away from vista there wasnt any point in going above 1 gb of ram.

[Zhaoman]

a 17in laptop is sexier than a 15in, 500Gb is faster than 128Gb and 1Gb video ram is obviously better than 256Mb.

If i was a company exec I'd take advantage of the chronic IT illiteracy of the masses too. Sex sells, capitalism deals sweet justice and i'd be rolling in it

[oolon]

I can understand why many people would get a 17" laptop, they don't have a permenant place to put a computer, they don't care about computers enough to want even to find a place, they keep it in a draw, they put it on the dining room table to use it. The started using the internet when they could get Wi-Fi, so even less reason to find a place. They screen is easy to see and at the end of the day they can put back it in a draw, and they don't have an "ugly" computer cluttering the place up.

[TooNice]

For many students, it makes sense. Larger screen of similar quality is often more comfortable to use than a smaller one whether it is for work or leisure. Most do not need to bring it to campus, so it only need to be transportable enough to take on the train home with other luggage.

And for the same product family, 500GB is often faster than a 128GB But frankly speaking, many people I know who aren't completely computer literate do not pick a mechanical 500GB over a 128GB SSD because price aside, but because extra capacity is not a bad thing.

But this thread is reminding me to do a full reformat some time. I've really grown lazy, used to do it every 6 months if not less, and now I can't even be bothered to do it once a year.

[Zhaoman]

None of my 'computer illiterate' friends have used over 80Gb on their PCs... And only one of my fairly computer literate friends have passed the 250Gb mark, but he is a bit obssessed with downloading movies... He's got a terrabyte of limewire hiding in his wardrobe. Nobody else comes close really. I'm now on 120Gb

[dreemteem]

Well, the point is not to make you happy. The point is to make money. That's why you get all the bundled nonsense, the sub-standard parts and the relentless upselling.

And laptops! Don't get me started on them...

[Syllopsium]

a 17in laptop is sexier than a 15in, 500Gb is faster than 128Gb and 1Gb video ram is obviously better than 256Mb.

If i was a company exec I'd take advantage of the chronic IT illiteracy of the masses too. Sex sells, capitalism deals sweet justice and i'd be rolling in it

I see your point, but 500GB *will* be faster than 128GB (either due to data on a lightly used drive being located on the faster parts of the disk, or by the 500GB drive being constructed using more modern technology). 1GB VRAM clearly is better than 256MB for some games these days.

I'm still using a 500GB drive and have about 30GB left. There's a few TV programmes on there and a number of apps. Games eat space these days, and as soon as you start playing with virtual machines more resources are suddenly much in demand..

What I struggle to understand are people that upgrade when their system is already fast enough for their needs. I've only ever done that when I think it's time to max out a system before components go out of stock or become too expensive.

PK

[lodore]

Hello,

the new dell laptop dont have much preinstalled stuff.
it has the dell dock,java,office trial,works,dell webcam central (if you have bultin webcam)


some of my clients have brought toshiba laptops and packard bell desktops and they are horrible for bloatware. plus they even clutter up the desktop with shortcuts to ebay,amazon etc...
the worst thing is that they dont come with a windows disc. you have to burn your own recoverymedia with the toshibas. not sure about the packard bells.

the other problem is that that bloatware will leave traces behind. thats why i prefer a windows disc so i can format and set it up correctly.

on a close related topic: one of my clients has a acer netbook and wanted it to be reset to factory settings. so i tryed what i done with other acer laptops open up the acer recovery tool and burn recovery media. then i remembered they dont come with a disc drive. luckily acer have an image on another partition so you can restore back to defaults. It keeps asking me to burn recovery media with a notification in the right hand corner. surely acer could of just dissbled the notifications knowing that model doesnt have a disc drive?

if the hard drive fails you cannot restore.
overall acer wtf....