Originally Posted by
David Weaver
You can spend as much as you want. I gave up buying expensive machines a while ago because the price never makes sense in a longer scheme.
5 years ago, I bought an HP DV7 format laptop (17"). They are hulky, but if you're not traveling on business a lot, it's no big deal. It cost me $600 with 4 gb of memory back then, and a dual core AMD processor. I think chasing high processor speed is a waste of money, everything is finite with computers, just my opinion. I could easily buy two laptops for what a lot of people pay for 1, and certainly at 5 years+ per PC, my second PC will be faster than a single "better at first" PC for years 5-10.
The HP we use is getting a bit long in the tooth now, but it still works fine, and the only problem I've had with it was something any woodworker could solve - the socket that the charger plugs into became a little loose, mostly because my very young daughter as soon as she learned to walk took to tugging at the power cord. I glued it a year ago, no problems since.
Apple is off their rocker on price (in my opinion - pretty much on everything they sell), and I am by no means a "poor" fellow. I just don't agree with throwing money at people unless they have a really convincing reason for it, and keeping a platform exclusive to jack up prices isn't a good reason to me. When the DV7 poops out, I will probably just get another one.
I have a relative who also bought a DV7 at the same time I did, he's also still using his, except he uses it for work all day. Mine probably only gets 3 hours of use time a day, or maybe a little more between my wife and I. I'd consider that a lot of use, but we no longer watch TV. My mother also got the same computer at the same time. She managed to allow her dogs to extract keys from the keyboard permanently by leaving the computer on a chair that the dogs jumped on and ran across (my parents can't keep anything nice for long, it's sort of a natural skill they have).
All of us have had longevity issues with the power supply cord - I'd say they last about 12-18 months before the computer rejects them (HP branded or otherwise doesn't seem to make a difference), but they cost $7 each, so that's not really much of an issue.
In my view, 95% of very nice costs 1/2 to 1/3rd as much as 100% of very nice. I'll keep my money for other things.