As readers of this blog know, I bought a refurbished Sony VAIO laptop last year, and it died within nine months.
So I decided to go with the hypothesis that buying refurbished laptops online is too exciting. This time I want to try something boring.
My ideal would have been to buy a Thinkpad X Series Tablet that weighed less than three pounds. However, the price tag for one of these was - you guessed it - too exciting.
So after conferring with various colleagues and other mavens, I took a serious look at buying a laptop directly from Dell. I settled on a new (not refurbished) Inspiron 710m, which weighs in at four pounds. No frills, no extras - just the "3yr Plus" warranty package.
The latter adds $279. to the total, but I spent considerably more than
that on maintaining the last laptop that lasted me three years.
Total price tag: $1,363.90. This includes shipping, tax, and warranty.
If
all goes well, I will be able to complain 12, 24, and 36 months from
now that the arrangement is tediously reliable. In this context, boring is good.
