An x220 in Tp4's hands can still fly, U give one of these oldies to a young person, they'll install it into a crawl and chew though a 9cell in under 2 hours.
Laptops in the wide don't last very long. Something always breaks , even thinkpads. I.T. people usually are a little more careful, but still, hinges, keyboards, ports, screens, grease-dust, carpet dust. The physical stuff don't last, and if not self-repaired, with Geeksquad prices that general consumers face, one might as well buy a new laptop.
Someone in the know, might do well with a tinkertype Thinkpad, but the average schmo, just buy a new toshiba satellite every 3 yrs, and he's good to go.
I completely disagree.
The math doesn't work if you know someone even remotely competent, and that includes your local computer shop.
You buy a Toshiba/Hp/Acer/etc.. they spend $700-800. Yes it has a nice warranty, but can you go without your laptop for 2 weeks while it gets repaired? If it's a work laptop, absolutely not. In 2-3 years that laptop is tired and beat and you want to replace it. That's what it was designed to do, last long enough to survive the warranty.
By comparison I can deck out a nice used Lenovo for about $350 and they get about 5 years from it. If it breaks or gets dropped it's cheap to fix. I get called in once every 9 months on average to do a clean up and they stay running well the entire time (most have learned to call at the first sign of trouble). The biggest reason they get replaced is the HDD fails (expensive to fix) or the OS is so out of date that compatibility is an issue. I actually have quite a number of systems in offices and running around in cars that I service that are over a decade old and still going, slow by modern standards, but it's 10 years old, what do you expect.
As far as speed, yeah they may bring it to a crawl, but they would do that to any machine so that's a wash. A four year old mid level I5/8gb/ssd is not going to bog down noticeably faster than a newer mid to low end I5/8gb/ssd, they aren't that dissimilar and if they bog down one, the other is not far behind because it's cumulative. If they have it cleaned up every 9 months or so it will stay running well, but many will run them into the ground before they take it in for servicing, at which point a good shop or tech can fix it, while Geek Squad is going to recommend a brand new system. We'll get to why in a moment.
Total cost of ownership for 5 yearsLenovo = $350 + $600 worth of servicing.
Toshiba = $700 + another $700 2-3 years later + $600 worth of servicing.
That's $950 vs $2000.
And if it's an office, I can service multiples for less.
Now, you can say they could buy cheaper ones, true, but they don't because the last one they bought for $400 only lasted two years and it was slow and they hated it from the day they brought it home. When was the last time you used a brand new $400 computer? They suck. So they spent $500 hoping it will last longer, while a little faster, it didn't so they tried $600, then $700, then $800. I have customers who were spending well over a grand trying to find laptops that would survive more than 2-3 years. This is why people end up buying an Apple, they get on this endless cycle of junk that falls apart after 2-3 years and they get fed up with it (and dealing with Geek Squad) and think Apple is the answer.
Regarding Geeksquad
Geeksquad are not techs, they used to be before Best Buy bought them, but they aren't anymore.
They are the top sales people retrained as "techs", anything serious is either done remotely by a real tech or sent out to a depot to be repaired and they do a piss poor job of it. The fact that it's their top sales people should also be a clue about their real purpose, sales. Call a tech or take it to an actual computer shop where they hire people who can fix things, you will pay less and it will be taken care of better and usually faster.
