A Message To The Average Person: ELECTRONICS DEPRECIATE IN VALUE!

Disclaimer: I'm not complaining, I swear I'm not complaining.

The other day I was offered a computer for $200, and the part that sweetened the deal was that I could work the computer off. Well, ended up that I got the computer for free, and that is a very good thing. You see, somebody told the person who was given the computer that the computer was worth $300, so to sell it for $200 seems like a good deal, right?

WRONG!

It seems that the average person doesn't realize how much electronics depreciate in value. Hell, the way I figure it, the second you even use any item electronic in nature you can take at least 10% off of the original price right there.

Anyway, this computer is a Dell Optiplex Gx260, and from what I've surmised it was pretty big in the corporate world, oh, 5 years ago (by my assumption). It has a Pentium 4 processor, which is decent, the RAM is nothing to write home about, but 512 is decent as well (I mean, come on, not super great by any means, but it gets the job done). The optical drive... let's not talk about that... CD-ROM (that's right, it only reads CD's) is soooo 1995. The hard drive is 111 GB, which isn't bad, though it is quite an odd number. So, in 2002, when this computer was manufactured, it was indeed worth $300 (or possibly more).

The problem is, I looked it up on eBay, and this exact computer, with an even bigger hard drive (200 GB) is currently going for $60 on eBay. That means, of course, that $200 was a huge rip-off for this machine. The thing is that I know nobody was trying to rip anybody off by selling this computer for such a super inflated price. The lady who said it was worth $300 actually believed it was worth $300. Nevermind that a quick eBay search would prove that theory wrong. To them, selling a computer that was supposedly worth $300 for $200 is a pretty good deal.

Okay, so it did come with the appropriate cords, a faded keyboard, a ball mouse (yech) and a tube monitor (double yech). Those add-ons do sweeten the pot a little I assume, but the fact of the matter is that the tower is worth about $50 (since the HDD size is smaller than the one going for $60 on eBay), the monitor is worth about $6, the mouse is worthless... okay, maybe worth 50 cents, and we can say the keyboard is worth 50 cents as well. Along with the 2 cords, which we'll say are worth $1 apiece, we have a grand total of $59. That's my appraisal and I'm sticking to it, and truthfully that may even be a little high.

Ah, but let's not forget the software end of things. Windows 2000, Outlook, and a few other programs nobody cares about. Ah, and we can't forget the CD burning software, even though the CD drive is read-only. I'm not really sure what good that could possibly do, unless it magically makes a read-only drive write as well.

So anyway, I'll say it again, electronics depreciate in value. And the percentage in which they depreciate isn't a small one either. Let's take another example, one that still kind of bothers me, my beloved laptop. It is a Toshiba Qosmio G25-AV513, purchased in 2005 for the insane price of $3,000. When you consider all that it does, it is one insanely bitchin' laptop. TV Tuner, Media Center, DVD-RW, beautiful screen, the list goes on. And of course the RAM, HDDs and crap like that are decent too (I'm too lazy to type *all* of the specs). Anyway, at the end of 2005 my mom bought that laptop for me for $3,000. You'd think "Oh, that was only a little over 3 years ago, it's still gotta be worth a couple thousand". That's where you'd be totally wrong. The highest price it is going for on eBay right now is about $850. I suppose it's still expensive considering the age of the technology, but it's less than one third of the original price.

Anyway, it would do people some good to learn about Moore's Law and realize that with technology getting cheaper and cheaper every day, things that are even a few years old will have an insane depreciation in value.

Once again, I am not complaining. I am never one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Even though my laptop is great, it is still more fragile than a desktop. I needed a workhorse, and I got one.

I just needed an excuse to rant and finally post to my blog again! Plus, I really do think that this is a lesson that people should take to heart... look up the value of things instead of making your own arbitrary value based on prices from years ago.

With all of that being said, I'm off to try and install Windows XP on this beast!