Re: upgrading, was Power adapter

[Don Perley <perley@cadence.com>]

At 09:55 AM 8/9/96 EDT, Robert Dewar wrote:
>Don asks
>
>"Just out of curiosity, is it because you all need the extra few pixels and
>megahertz enough to shell out, or is it one of those corporate pecking order
>things"

>I can certainly answer for myself that it is both the screen real estate
>and raw speed that are important. I do major compiler development work,

>"I think I would have a tough time going to my accountant and explaining that
>I bought 6 different model laptops over the course of a year at $5-7K each for
>business use and sold each 2 months later for half what I paid and that it made
>good business sense."
>
>Well first of all, even if you are keeping at the cutting edge, it is more
>like two or at most three a year, not six a year.

My 755CD (remember those?) was the fastest IBM had to offer 7 months ago.  Now
I think it's been supplanted 3 times.  That doesn't even count jumping between
brands as one or the other has more chache' (pardon the pun).

> Second, the questoin of
>whether spending 15-20K $ to improve the productivity of person X is worth
>while depends on person X! 

It's also a matter of figuring what the productivity enhancement will be,
generally
somewhat less than the system speed enhancement, which is in turn somewhat
less than
the processor speed enhancement.

>Finally we do not sell our old thinkpads, there
>are other people who need a machine and do not have the same computing
>requirements who can make good use out of older machines.

At that point, you are implicity depreciating it to the price at which the guy
with less requirements could buy a used machine that meets his needs.  You save
the overhead of actually buying and selling, but it's sort of the same.


-Don Perley
perley@cadence.com