David Kellam

In response to Richard’s post, I provide as a rough guide the following regarding any new PC purchase:

I echo those pains! John and I are constantly complaing about it: particularly Dell. Apple is nice and easy to follow. You can even run Windows on their MacBooks now

My advice to people is thus:

1. If you’re buying a PC laptop, stick to the BUSINESS range models, as these almost always have far better industrial design and durability. e.g. Dell has two product lines: Latitude and Ispiron. The latter have heaps of features, but are hunks of junk. The former are pretty stable and reliable (although I’ve seen exceptions).

2. Either buy extended warranty, use a Gold credit card that gives you $warranty+12 OR buy the base model of something
e.g. Apple MacBook circa $1,500 will cost you ~$300 to make up 3 year’s warranty. Even given Apple’s high notebook resale values, the machine won’t be worth more than $400 in 3 years’ time. So warranty makes sense if you:
- can’t afford the risk of it failing in months 13-24
- buy warranty on everything else you buy
IMHO, if you NEVER buy extended warranties, you’re better off. It’s essentially self-insuring. But with the (e.g. ANZ Visa Gold) credit card bonus warranty, you can get the best of both worlds. ANZ Gold cards are $87 per year. NAB had a $0 first year special, ANZ probably have one too. Worth getting.

3. Factor on at least $300 per year in security software and PC technician costs per Windows computer. And that’s just to keep it working. (Obviously you can do this yourself)

4. Factor in another $300-$500 to get home wireless working reliably when not using Apple equipment. If you’re willing to put up with frustration and manual reconfiguration you can get around this, but these last two notes are for the uninitiated.

5. Buy a Mac
I used to be pro-Mac, then I was ambivalent (particularly when Macs were demonstrably slower), then impartial (”it depends…”) now I’m so totally pro mac that it’s not funny. Particularly with Boot Camp and Parallels. The hardware is better; the support costs (financial or otherwise) are significantly reduced; the ease of use is significantly enhanced.

6. Don’t touch Vista.
Nobody trusts Microsoft with an OS they’ve had 6 years to perfect. I’m recommending a 12-month wait on Vista (in which time we’ll see SP1, SP1a and the announcement of SP2 rush past). Then it will at least be acceptable to run.

Also note that the major reason for upgrading to Vista is to make your swanky new computer look swanky. Which means don’t buy the Home version, or you miss out on the swanky Aero interface. It’s no coincidence wanky is only one letter off…

This entry was posted on Friday, February 9th, 2007 at 2:24 pm and is filed under Business, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.