avg computers or avg cars, which do you like more

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I just wanted to know which you like more in terms of average price for a decently equipped model in the value mid range in terms of prices. I find computers are the value champ in terms of bang for buck but cars are catching up maybe?

I will give an example, this Lenovo AMD 6 laptop I am using, despite my modest surfing and word processing use, never bogs down when I surf endlessly without running a clean out etc. Now as far as cars, I feel I shop used cars in the 5k range or new cars in the budget/economy range and that is suiting my needs fine as well.

So my question is, isn't this a great time to be alive if your computer and car needs are all in the value or bang for buck range? And if so, what kindo f computer and car do you run.
 
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HP Workstation running XP Pro (because of a LOT of legacy software, CAD, GIS, etc.). $99 off eBay with a good video board and a great sound card (very quiet). Of course it now has 1.5 TB of SSD's and flies right along.

1993 Ford F-150 4x4 Extended Cab with posi and almost every option. Only 83K on the clock three weeks ago for $6K+ a bit. Very few issues, super clean garage queen
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My Civic would have to be the queen of value for cars. I paid $4900 for it when it was just a wee lad of 80,000 miles, and it has been incredibly reliable, and at 194K I expect a good 50K more, if not 100-150K. In depreciation alone, in terms of miles it has kept off the Sienna, it has more than paid for itself, to say nothing of the gas savings I've enjoyed. Some of you might consider this well below average for a car. In terms of a new car, 4900 is quite low, but it fit in with the OPs 5K range.

I insist on average computers now. I'm done trying to save money by buying the cheapest laptop I can find, that has specs that are supposedly equivalent. I have gotten burned trying to save money with a Dell, then with a Toshiba. I spent more last time I went laptop shopping than I ever have before, for a computer---$800, but this time I got a better chip and an SSD hard drive. Best computer I've ever had by far. No complaints after 18 months, which is more than I can say for my first two laptops---feels about as fast as it did when I first got it. So I would put an 800 laptop in the upper middle class for computers. You can get them a lot cheaper, and a lot more expensive, but there's no way I'm going to pay less any more. Trying to get value for computers means I end up paying just as much as I would have at the time of purchase, in hardware trying to fix the darn thing. And of course tearing down a laptop is very time consuming, at least for someone who does not do this for a living. Lenovos only for me, from here on out.
 
Yea. My computer is from 2010. Orignally built as a i7-920 with 6GB, HD3870, 64GB Corsair SSD and 4x 1TB Samsung F3R HDDs in Raid 5, Ive upgraded it over the years to its current config of i7-980X with 12GB, HD7970 (Plus a Geforce GT240 for secondary monitors), 128GB Samsung 830, 4x Toshiba 2TB enterprise drives in 4TB RAID 10 and 3x Toshiba 3TB enterprise drives in 9TB RAID 5 (plus a 4th 3TB drive as global hot spare).

10 years ago if you were running a 7 year old computer it would be woefully out of date; pretty much unusable. I haven't yet felt like its inadequate unless Im trying to do too many things. Like running a VM while trying to do Fallout 4 or something. FAllout 4 runs on it but needs its everything its got. Granted, Ive replaced everything but the motherboard, but still, I love how good it is. I was running 4GHz on both chips, but I had to pull back to 3.8 on the 980X awhile back and I should probably check if its still ok at that. Been running for 150 days straight though so I haven't been too concerned. Thats whats gonna kill it I think, is the accelerated degradation of the CPU from the overclock.

And I love how cheap panthers are. And I love to tinker with them. I know them inside and out by now which makes finding issues or modifying them very easy.
 
Two both questions, yes.
Decent desktops (I know, I'm old fashioned) and decent cars are available pretty cheaply.
Our current machine was deeply discounted and Staples even offered a hundred buck off coupon for machines
loaded with Win 8, as though you couldn't do a Win 10 download for free, so the thing was incredibly cheap.
Cars?
We got the '12 Accord LX-P at what I considered a giveaway price and while both Foresters were rather more costly, I did get the dealer (same for both) down to invoice on both, which seemed okay.
If you want a cheaper AWD two row CUV, you could save maybe 10K by visiting your Mitsubishi store (if you can find one) while in sedans, 2.5L Fusions are dirt cheap and are pretty nice cars.
All in all, there is plenty of good product out there at reasonable prices whether you're looking for a car or a computer.
 
Well I always built my own computer. Used to be a pretty good value because you could build it cheaper than most places sold them, but now it's about the same price or actually slightly more if you had to pay for Windows 10 and didn't a free copy when you could. But the value in building it yourself is that you can pick the best components and get some parts on sale. Just doesn't work if you're in a rush. I always like doing my own because you don't end up with junk on the machine that you don't need and you can pick the best components. Has actually been pretty reliable, most manufacturers cheap out on the power supply or the motherboard so when it fails, it's all custom so you can't fix it anyway.

As for cars, depends what kind of value you're looking for. I'm getting old and spoiled so I ended with a Mercedes E-350, they have massive depreciation so the value isn't there when new, but used, you can get one with lots of options and they're under 20k when 5-6 years old, around 30-35k when around 4-5 years old.
 
I used my vette as a daily driver for a very very long time 400k miles.

I use a $39 7" tablet as my "computer". $10 cell phone on a $6 mo burner plan.
 
I'm like Wolf359. I just built my computer for the next 7-10 years. Spent about $1200 but selected all my components from www.userbenchmark.com and www.pcpartpicker.com. There are no bottle necks in the machine. Processor, SSDs, RAM, video, and network are all equally matched so it is effortlessly fast on everything I do now. I don't see that changing in the near future.

Sure you could buy a $400 computer but they will use a spinny HDD and onboard video. barely can load a internet browser with all the ads and stuff when new. Let alone once the leach apps get installed over time and drag the performance down. Its also worth it for me to not have to remove bloatware that comes installed.

I used to do computer tech for my family and friends when they buy a cheapie with hot CPU bit everything else is cheap [censored] the bogs it down. Had one with an inadequate fan that made the processor throttle back the clock to not die. Replaced the heatsink and it ran much better but the onboard video made browsing the web lethargic. Just to show the difference I donated my old Nvidia FX5200 video card (out of data old video card at the time) and it really woke up that computer. Took a few minutes to convince my cousin it was not the processor but the video card that made it slow.

I put over 150K miles on all my vehicles and I usually sell them 3rd party. I keep the interior and exterior in good shape so it holds its value.

I guess the moral is sometimes you spend a little more but you know where it went and can appreciate it. It's not like buying a expensive brand only for the brand and not the quality.

Same experience with my Weber gas grill. Hands down a better experience and longevity that Charbroil and Brinkman grills I had before.
I dont miss the extra $300 I spend AT ALL after 5 years of flawless service.
 
My Accord is value-oriented, but my next car I will want to be either an EX-L Accord or Z71 LTZ Silverado.

As for computers, I love having a high-end MacBook Pro for mobility and power. It really shines with VMs and Xcode. However, I do have an old but trusty HP Compaq Elite 8000 that I will be upgrading to a Core 2 Quad Q9650, 16GB of DDR3 1333, 500GB Samsung EVO 850 and an NVIDIA GeForce 1050 Ti.

I guess I got expensive taste on both fronts?
 
2013 model laptop, and it still out-specs many off-the-shelf 2017 models ( 2.7 GHz Quad Core i7, 512 SSD, 16 GB RAM, Intel built-in video 1024 MB plus NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M video card (automatic switching), 15" 2880x1600 display. So 4 years old and no sign of being obsolescent, let alone obsolete.
 
Originally Posted By: turtlevette
I used my vette as a daily driver for a very very long time 400k miles.

I use a $39 7" tablet as my "computer". $10 cell phone on a $6 mo burner plan.

Got monies in the bank I see.Good going.Yeah, I use an Android Tracfone for 100 bucks a year, already have a landline, impossible to use all minutes,texts and data the way I use it which is mostly when on vacation.Have a Fox Mustang which has almost 500,000 miles, 2nd engine,2nd rear end,3rd transmission, didnt necessary need new driveline items, they had to be 'improved'.
 
I used to build my own PC's spend hours researching for the optimal components and so on, but sice I'm not longer in university I simply don't have the time anymore.

So currently I'm running a Macbook Pro Retina 15" from 2015 and recently aquired a 12.9" ipad Pro, which easily replaces 90% of what I'm doing with my computer - except for Scanning (high quality scanning) and RAW photo management - other than that the most fantastic tablet I've ever used.

In terms of cars I buy used - but with motorcycles I bought the all new, the price difference wasn't big enough to buy a few year old motorcycle.
 
I'd rather settle for an average car if it saved me enough money to get a Mac.

Hey wait a minute, I just realized that I have an average car and a Mac!
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I have a refurb business grade HP, paid about 100$ for it. Upped it to 8gb of ram. 250 gb HD (i dont store much on it). Use it for surfing web and playing music and it does both with ease. Been debating to put an ssd in it but cant justify it since the HDD is good enough. I still have a Dell dimension 2400 that works ok...running xp home, but it could likely benefit from an SSD but the Ssd is worth more than the whole machine lol. I got my car for 8500$ with 45k miles on it, not a great price but considering its been my transportation for past 7-8 years now, I cant complain. Not having a car payment is nice and it does what i need it to do.
 
I tend to buy refurb computers as well. My last HP desktop, with Win 7 finally packed up. Didn't make sense to try to fix a 7-8 year old machine that took DDR2 memory. I found another HP refurb with an Intel Core i7-4770 Processor 3.40GHz and 8GB of RAM. I added another 16GB of RAM to run more VMs. Cloned the 500gb HDD to my 512GB SSD that was in the old machine, moved the other two HDDs and I was back up and running in no time.

Been parting out the old HP. Know anyone who needs 12GB of DDR memory and a good AMD Athlon II X4 620 processor?

The MB is toast. Video and SATA gone, who knows how long until more stuff fails. Wasn't worth putting more money into it. Got the above described replacement and upgrade with Win 10 Pro for $510 or $520 pre-tax at MicroCenter about a month ago. It will run my VMs and a browser on the host OS what I need it to do.
If I find I need the last 8GB of memory it will take, I can probably upgrade that for about $100 and then sell off the two 4gb sticks that are replaced by the 8gb upgrades.
 
Both?

I'm okay with average cars and I don't think I've ever bought a new computer. I'll either go with cheap and used off of ebay or get refurbished through a manufacturer's outlet.
 
The conclusion is that if you have average things, you actually have nice things now, atleast as it relates to computers and cars. The assumption or the weak point then becomes if you don't even have average things, why not and what do you have. No modicum of intellectual curiosity and too ghetto to try.
 
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2011 Lenovo ThinkPad W510 laptop here. It's still pretty decent and well built. I have made a habit of using business-class refurbs for a long time now.

My 2004 Caravan would be delighted to be called "average". :^)
 
Used to like fancy computers.
Overclocked, high-spec stuff. Built my own from 1998 to about 2004.
Then got into cars, sold my computer stuff for a turbo Supra build.
Haven't had any really fancy computers since.
And I stopped modifying cars for speed so now I'm pretty mediocre on both fronts.

It comes with growing out of hobbies.
Home ownership makes other hobbies seem trivial.
edit: I do have a pretty nice HP 17" workstation laptop with a fast i7, solid state HD, 24gb RAM, yeah, but even that pales compared to the expensive new junk people buy!
 
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