Leasing a laptop

wheresmydoshat

Hi,

Having had an awful experience with my current PC depleting in value within weeks, and now 3 years later being worthless, I'm pondering my next move and whether its really worth spending out again.

So I'm considering leasing a laptop through my business. I would never usually consider renting anything, but with laptops/pc's they got out of date so quickly maybe its worth being able to upgrade without paying out a lump sum.

I know Dell do a leasing deal, any other recommendations or advice please ??

Marty_J

Apple have a leasing programme:

http://www.apple.com/uk/financing/professional/residual.html

Or if you'd still consider buying, Apple's computers tend to hold their resale value very well. I could get £500 for my 3 year old iMac on eBay; I think it cost about £800 or so at the time.

damo24

If you decide to lease, check out the long term costs. I once looked into leasing a new system and found that I would be paying nearly 3 times the retail cost. There was the advantage of not having to pay up front but it was a costly advantage.

davethorp

PC world also do a leasing option as recently a salesman tried to fob my mum off onto the leasing rather than regular credit. Fortunately she cottoned on when on the phone to the finance company and proceeded to deny him a sale

RobTang

it might be worth re-considering how you evaluate your system's "worth" as well, just because it doesn't have monertary value doesn't mean its worthless.

Computers / laptops dont really go "out of date" quickly, but because manufacturers are churning out hardware revisions so quickly its peoples perception that they do.
If it still can do everything you want it to do, you dont really have a problem, if not there are always cost effective upgrades.
My 4 year old Athlon x2 can still do 90% of what I do (with no trouble) on my newer quadcore desktop. (the rest being gaming)

There are very few situations where it is essential you have the latest kit, mostly its only good for a spot of 1up-manship

If your company has a good leasing deal it might be benificial but I think long run its not really a good idea. Personal lease agreements are never a good idea. you are better of buying somthing nice then flogging it a year later.

old_codger1

I'd buy a chea('ish) laptop and then bang it on Ebay for whatever you can get for it after, say, 3-4 years.

http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/eMachine_D620_Laptop_LX.N230Y.003/version.asp

or, for something a bit better

http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Acer_Aspire_6530G_Laptop_LX.AUS0X.142/version.asp

TBH, people who complain about their laptops dropping in value, 'within weeks', are usually trying to buy too high a spec laptop and thus wasting money. Laptops with the very latest bells and whistles are ALWAYS going to be a waste of money, virtally by definition. Look around for something where the spec is, say, 6 months behind the very latest stuff and you'll save a fortune.

If you want the latest stuff just because... well, you do, then you'll have to pay for it. If you want to add even MORE to the cost by adding finance costs then leasing's as good a way as any other I'd say.

old_codger1

RobTang wrote: »

it might be worth re-considering how you evaluate your system's "worth" as well, just because it doesn't have monertary value doesn't mean its worthless.

Well, that too.

RobTang wrote: »

My 4 year old Athlon x2 can still do 90% of what I do (with no trouble) on my newer quadcore desktop. (the rest being gaming)

There are very few situations where it is essential you have the latest kit, mostly its only good for a spot of 1up-manship

Agreed.

wheresmydoshat

thanks for all your comments.

i am going to rethink this, as a lot of the deals i am finding are £50 a month and tbh i would rather buy outright if its going to be that much.

my current pc i made 2 mistakes with, i purchased a packard bell, and from pc world. never again.

but what i may look at doing is getting it updated a bit, and more importantly cleaned up. from the moment i set it up it has never run very quickly, mainly due to all the rubbish it came with.

wheresmydoshat

i should also add that all i need this pc for is basic day to day stuff, word, excel, email, web. most of my pictures, music, video are stored on an external harddrive, so the pc really shouldn't be struggling and doesn't need to be anything fancy by a long shot.

posted_2

External hard drives fail, better to store it on the main drive, and use external for backup.

A 3 year old pc should do all that with ease, if it's slow, it's probably down to ram, too much running at startup, or viruses etc.

will-he-payitoff

Could be that it just needs more ram or you have something on there thats slowing it down, have you run this to see how much ram you can add? http://www.crucial.com/uk/?cpe=pd_google_uk&gclid=CMfTk66MlpoCFRNM5QodIT4XNw