If you buy enough gadgets you'll quickly notice that they depreciate. Some much more significantly than others. If you happen to hit a gold nugget, the price may dramatically increase after it becomes an antique.
While purchasing a brand new gadget for the purpose or resale 20 years later is a bit of a moon shot, most of your gadgets are just going to dent, get banged up, and loose value. You might be able to protect this by putting on a cover but it's a dangerous world out there even with a screen protector.
My 3rd Gen Apple Ipad 32gig was purchased for a whopping $700 or so and even though it still functions perfectly fine and has no large scratches on it, it's valued close to $150 4 years later. This is roughly an 18% loss every year!
This type of depreciation is not surprising to most since you just expect things to become worthless. However, armed with the knowledge that you know things will quickly become obsolete, will one be less prone to frequent upgrades? It depends on how susceptible you are to marketing. If you are then you must have every new phone upgrade. Me? I'm still using an iPhone 5.
One trick to prolong the upgrade is to refuse to upgrade the OS as long as you can. It is however inevitable because some apps you like may require the upgraded OS after a while. If you lag behind slightly, you might be able to eek out another 6 months to a year on the device.
After getting burned on multiple occasions on laptops that depreciate to nothing, I've grown sick of the vanishing value. Of course, I still need my fix of gadgets specially since this is a gadget blog. I am now a bit more careful in the electronic products that I buy to own.
It certainly is a sore point to see a gadget still usable but worth nothing due to it being outdated. The thing is, technology is moving so fast, its going to happen. What can you do as a consumer to protect against this tidal wave of innovation that sucks your pocket book dry if you get too close to the bleeding edge? Just step back from the bleeding edge a few notches.
If you buy a computer that is state of the art, I mean the BEST of everything. You can easily spend $10-20k on it. But step back 1 or 2 generations and you can buy the state of the art 1 year ago for $500. When you upgrade, you upgrade to that operating point. Never on the bleeding edge but just a semi-sharp, slightly dull edge.
It certainly isn't as satisfying but the price penalty for bleeding edge is enormous. Of course, it never hurts to splurge a little once in a while if it's well within budget. =D
No comments:
Post a Comment