Everybody lies

posted on Wednesday, December, 12th, 2007 in default

I’m in a bit of a pickle at the moment, which is one of the reasons I haven’t been blogging as much as I used to recently.

Here is my problem: I am thinking about buying a new laptop.

Now, I’m sure for most people this wouldn’t be a big deal. But for me it definitely is, not only because I’m more or less continually broke, but mainly because I haven’t bought a really new computer for years. Usually I get my brother’s old one as soon as he buys a new one, and even my current laptop I bought used on ebay (never would have been able to afford that one new). But since it is about 8 years old now, I can’t really work with it anymore. Plus, it has developed the annoying habit of switching itself off at irregular intervals ever since I installed Windows XP.

So my first thought was getting a used laptop on ebay again (after all, it worked the first time). But what with all the stuff you hear about crooks on ebay nowadays I am not really fond of the idea anymore. And since the prices for new ones have sunk to comparably low levels as well, I made the decision to actually get myself a sparkling new one. Well, maybe not sparkling exactly.

Little did I know how complicated this would turn out to be.

Did you know that there are about 7 trillion different laptop models available out there? At least that’s what it feels like. It took me weeks to even narrow down what performance requirements I have exactly – and to reconcile that with how much I might just be able to afford.

Then I looked through every electronics store in 3 different towns, fiddled around with the laptops on display, usually falling in love with the ones I will never be able to afford. Then went home to compare prices on the internet, which is a whole other story again.

Then, because I am useless at actually making a decision, the next week I went back to the stores just to find out that meanwhile they had completely different models on sale. Which sent me back to the computer to check out their prices online. And so on and so forth ad infinitum.

Today I was almost ready to snap and just order one from amazon (they do not really have the cheapest offers, but at least the shipping is free and I know I can trust them to deliver the next day) when I suddenly remembered that usually all computer stuff gets a whole lot cheaper after Christmas. In February at the latest, when the new models come out.

Now what: Do I take advantage of a special before-Christmas offer right now, or is it better to rein in my impatience and wait 2 more months to see if prices go down again?

Then again: how much cheaper can laptops really get? They won’t exactly give them away for free next year, either. Right? So basically, if I wait a bit longer I will just be able to get a better model for the same money. Question is: do I really need a better model than I can afford right now?

See how complicated this is for me?

God, I really wish I had won the lottery last week (they had a 45 million jackpot). Life would be so much easier if I didn’t have to contemplate each and every Euro I spend unnecessarily.

Because, let’s be frank here: buying a new laptop is not really a necessity right now. I certainly could use it, but that doesn’t really make it necessary in the strictest sense.

Objectively speaking, spending several hundred Euros on what is basically only a very expensive new toy is quite foolish for me. I am unemployed, I will be lucky if my car survives the winter (keeping my fingers crossed), I should really invest more in my retirement fund for which at the moment I am just paying the minimum rates, I could also put the money towards saving for my emigration to NZ. Stuff like that would be much more reasonable, and responsible and all that. Boring, though.

And I always have been of the opinion that doing the responsible thing is way overrated. After all, who knows if I will even reach retirement age? I could be run over by a bus tomorrow. And, honestly, my life is boring enough already at the moment, so I might as well have a little fun while I can.

So, do I buy the bloody thing now or do I wait another 8 weeks?

Does anybody have insider knowledge of the expected laptop price development in the next two months? Or a crystal ball?