For years the prices of desktop systems plummeted while the prices of laptops remained steady at “too high to be taken lightly” numbers. It became cost effective to populate multiple rooms in a household with desktop machines, often sold by companies whose names were nearly unknown to the general consumer.
While desktops were being cranked out by unfamiliar companies, the laptop market was held by the few, the elite. It was not all that unusual to find households where each person in the family had his own desktop system, but where laptops were still on the rare side. If anybody had a laptop, it was probably one of the parents. It just didn't make sense to buy laptops for the kids, with the high prices involved.
Those days are gone. Cheap laptops – not cheap in quality but cheap in price – are on a rampage, and the time has never been better for the consumer to jump in and get a powerful laptop system that will do everything that he or she will probably ever need. Whether the laptop is for keeping the family budget, writing and maintaining a blog, sending family letters out through email, or whatever, today’s cheap laptops have more power and functionality than the average consumer is going to ever need.
The fact is that with commodity, off the shelf components, these cheap laptops are being sold by no-name companies but have the same quality that we see from the well known company brands. And why shouldn’t this be the case? These unknown companies know full well that if they cannot put a good product out there, they will disintegrate into dust and tumbleweeds in the “where are they now” desert. Competition is driving down prices, yes, but competition is also ensuring that quality is sufficient. The big name players are having to drop prices themselves in order to remain competitive; the new players on the block are having to ensure quality in order
Frankly, even if the quality of the cheap laptops is not quite on par with the systems put out by Dell, IBM, and HP, the prices of the latest laptops are so low that if the product eventually blows up the customer is not going to be overly distraught. The prices are low enough that the customer can simply go out and buy another cheap laptop. While laptops have not quite reached a “disposable” stage, they are fast nearing that perception. If something breaks or fails, it is easier and more cost effective, time wise, to go out and buy another one, rather than trying to fix it.
With high processor speeds, vast amounts of memory that never quit, huge quantities of disk storage space, excellent battery duration, and beautiful screen technology, the cheap laptops are fast, powerful, and convenient. With prices that are competitive with powerful desktop systems, why wouldn’t you jump in and buy a laptop?
The opportunity is now!
Nasreen Haque
