Originally posted by Stavri It's true what lightbox said about desktops, its still the best investment you can make in terms of performance for the money, easy to work on and upgrade. My i7 (920) desktop rig is 7 years old and still crushes anything that's thrown at it. Laptops on the other hand are closed systems, unyielding to upgrades apart from RAM and HDD (unless you have a Precision or one of those cool $2000+ gaming laptops.. ) I bought a Dell precision because I knew i could upgrade almost everything (and I eventually did cpu, gpu, ssd-msata), 16gb or Ram, two HDDs (DIY RGB LED screen with 98% Adobe RGB color gamut). You can only upgrade certain laptops (with dedicated GPUs that aren't printed on the mobo) and although I haven't crunched the numbers I think I've saved money in the long run (as opposed to chucking laptops every 2-3 years due to obsolescence)
Yes, but how much did your i7 desktop cost 7 years ago?
What would one equivalent in quality cost today?
I agree that those $2000+ laptops are a sweet thing. But I just don't need it.
I basically need a portable piece of hardware that has USB ports and can access the internet.
I know there are tablets out there that would server my function, but like you said they are the most closed system out there. Cannot even upgrade RAM or HDD, not to mention battery...
I'm worried I have two options:
1. Spend under $1000 for a device that is already obsolete the minute it hits the showroom and is so static that I will never be able to upgrade anything unless I invest a dumb amount of money in Cloud Services (
)
2. Spend $1000 over my budget and have the capacity to upgrade components in the future, but also have a machine that well exceeds my needs.
I'm out of college now and no longer need that capacity.
In a perfect world I would find a $500 laptop that will last me another 7 years...
not likely?
---------- Post added 05-07-15 at 09:26 AM ----------
Originally posted by Stavri Do you want to stick to iOS or go to Windows 8.1?
I'm done with iOS... lol
I liked it for a while, but if you can't keep up with their 18 month product life cycle then you're really SOL.
I actually prefer Windows 7, but in order to downgrade a machine I heard there are strange license agreements and some laptops can't even go back at this point...
The expensive ones can of course, or I buy into a system that's a few years old. I prefer not buying old hardware.
Though most things that hit the showroom are obsolete anyways.