- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
One reason that PCs don't hold their resale value is because the prices get better every year. For $500 next year, you can get more memory, more RAM, faster speeds, then $600 this year. So why on earth would you possibly buy an OLD PC when a new one is only a little more expensive and a lot better? After all, you need only go to Circuit City to find a basic model for $300 without peripherals, so why spend even $300 on a used model?
Macs don't advance all that much year after year, and you can assume the price isn't going to come down. Competition does matter, and the competition in the PC industry is ferocious, especially in pricing. Mac has no competition. If you want a Mac, you either spend the money, or get a used one a bit cheaper. You don't have any options.'
Computers aren't like cars, and you simply can't make "resale value" part of your equation like you can with cars. I drive a 2000 Honda. It still works fine, and has most of the features of a new Honda... and so it makes sense to buy a used Honda.
But would anyone buy a 2000 PC? No. Not because they won't still work (I'm sure most of us have a couple PCs from that era in our office or home, and they still run), but rather because the new ones cost so little and do so much more that it is not cost-effective to forego buying a new one. It certainly makes no sense to buy a used one.
Heck, there are so many PCs out there, we give them away. I give mine away to a local school to give as rewards for students who get good grades.
Macs are at a premium partly because they're so rare-- only 5% of the market. PCs are not rare, hence no premium.
Anyone who buys a computer thinking of the resale value is missing the point. Next year's new model will be cheaper and better. We've had 25 years of experience with this-- you're not going to convince anyone that it's a GOOD thing that a two-year old used computer is better than a brand new one. Well, you might be able to convince the Apple cult about that, but in my experience, you can convince them of anything, as long as you slap an Apple logo on it.
