I've started to wonder why people continue to buy new laptops every couple of years like the old ones are somehow broken or useless. Case in point- My wife's friend decided that she wanted a laptop. She'd never bought one before, and wondered if I could help her make some decisions. When I sat her down, I asked her the same questions I ask everyone before they buy.

-How important are looks to you?

-What will you be using the laptop for 95% of the time?

-How big a concern is weight and size to you?

-How much money are you looking to spend?

Long story short, we got her a used laptop from a local store for a right around $250. It was an older 12" Dell, with 1GB of RAM and a Pentium 4 processor (Can't remember the speed) and a somewhere in the neighborhood of a 50Gig hard drive.

Now, if she had gone out and bought something on her own, she probably would have gotten a Mac, and paid about $1500 for what they'd have upsold her to (she's a sucker for stuff like that).

It just amazes me that people who do nothing but type documents, browse the web, and play internet based flash games will pay close to $2000 to do that. I have a 14" pentium 3 laptop with 640MB of RAM, a 16MB graphics card and a Pentium 3 1.2Ghz processor with a 25 Gig hard drive. I paid $100 for it, and it does everything I need it to do. It even plays Torchlight, a game that just came out (and which, if you liked Diablo, you owe it to yourself to buy).

Don't misunderstand me, there are people who actually NEED a computer with a blazing processor, amazing graphics card and 4 gigs of RAM. Maybe they edit videos for a living, or design complex websites, or spend all day playing with Photoshop or something else very intensive. But for the majority of people out there, anything built after 2001 will still probably work just fine. Netbooks have more than proven that, with their incredible popularity despite their lack of speed and RAM. And if you're looking to buy something new, then there are many many options under $500 if you look around. Try techbargains.com, or check out places like Dell's refurbished laptops section.

People are just silly.

/rant