The Deadly Consumer Laptop: End of the Year Rant!!!

Most of you are aware that I have a little "side-business" that's responsible for funding all my Propellerheaded purchases, which needs the cash regardless of how frugal I am. The "bread and butter" of my operation is "flipping" laptops. Over the course of the last couple of years, I've moved my product line from being ThinkPad oriented to more Dell oriented. This is due mostly to a "bang-for-the-buck" commitment to my customers. The fact of the matter is that most of them couldn't care less about the differences of the finer points in design and build quality that comprise the differential in the market price between the two. For myself and a very few of my clients, ThinkPads still rules the roost, but for 8 of 10 laptops that I do; I tend to recommend something from the Dell Latitude (business) line. They are inexpensive, easy to fine, cheap to buy and well built. 

However, this rant isn't about the business line. Over the course of the last month or so, I've been brought 3 Dell laptops with problems. One of them was an older (D620) Latitude, but those coming in are a rarity. It's the other two that are the problem. I hate Inspirons, well for that matter, I hate: Gateways (post Acer buyout) in general, all Acers regardless of how good they look....and they look pretty good these days, and HP Pavilions. These are ALL consumer grade computers. Some are cheap originally, and some can push the $1000 envelope, but they have one thing in common.....THEY ARE ALL CONSUMER GRADE!

Here's the issue. Walmart....or more specifically, the Walmart-ization of comptuers. In business speak, it's called commoditization. What that means is that a particular class of product has gotten so ubiquitous that it's no longer considered brand driven, or differentiated. What that implies is that they are all generic and therefore only subject to the market forces of pricing and feature set, which in turn drives prices down into a "death-spiral" till it gets to the lowest possible $$$. What's so bad about that? Well, if it's cereal, that's one thing, but for a complex product like a laptop (and I say that on purpose), it's a very bad thing. When the pricing is in the range of $400 as the floor and $900 as the ceiling, then you take out the transportation costs (none of these products are made locally), profit of the individual entities in the supply chain, what you have is something between $150-250 worth of parts.So, should anyone be the least bit surprised when these things break in less than two to three years? It isn't for no reason that the warranties of these things run one year.

What pushed me over the edge to post this rant is this: $400-600 is still a lot of money. Us old computer cranks can wonder out loud about how little that is compared to the days of $2000 low-end desktops and $4000 laptops.....in $1995 dollars, are few and far between. The fact of the matter is that $500 is still a lot of money. Two days ago, I picked up a Dell Inspiron M5010 from a client. It was giving a "7 beep" error code. It turns out that means the motherboard or CPU didn't past POST. It was a $900 computer two years ago. After reviewing the forums, it's pretty apparent that it's a common issue from some detaching chips which seems to manifest itself at the....you guessed it.....two year mark. The repair or a motherboard replacement would put it in the over-$150 range, and understandably she doesn't want to invest that in this machine. Last year, her daughter brought me her computer. The infamous HP Pavilion DV6000 series with the nVidia graphic chip flaw. That was a $1000 computer. So, in the space of a year, we have about $2000 flushed down the toilet! That's a lot of money for a single parent teacher with a kid in college.

I would say that; it's enough to make you buy an Apple, but not only are they way expensive, but for all the added costs, they aren't immune to across the board issues like the nVidia debacle and the ATI one before that. It's just that they tend to support their buyers better than the majority of PC manufacturers. In fact, my stance is, if you can "pay the freight", AND have a need for what they do best (digital imaging, music, etc., then by all means, go right ahead. 

Really, my solution is the old retired corporate computer answer. Here's how it breaks down in terms of dollars involved. Lets say that when buying a new computer the typical buyer spends in the median of around $750. The typical home user seems to keep their computer for around 4 to 5 years. So if you go the long route, that comes out to be $150 or so per year. I routinely sell 3 year old corporate machine for between $250-300. Even if you estimate that they'll last 3 years since they are older to start with, that puts the outlay at about $100 per year on the high side. That's a 50% differential at it's worse for a better-built machine. In real world use, I'd bet that the average user will get the same amount of use out of each machine, largely due to the less likelihood of the better built machine breaking down. At least that's been my admittedly unscientific experience. 

Spend less, get a better machine. Sounds like a no-brainer, but people find it difficult to change their perceptions and behaviors until (like my teacher friend) suffer the painful bite of the deadly consumer laptop! Sure they look nice and shiny on the shelf in that store, vs. the plain and boring business look, but "you better watch out", or you're gonna cry.