> People who need to save $200 on a tablet where we live very likely do not need said tablet at all. In the end we just often buy inferior products (in design, functionality and longevity) in order to be able to purchase a larger total number of unnecessary items. We absurdly feel we've put our money to better use if we spent it on more things, most of which we cannot put to good use anyway.
This statement seems totally divorced from my reality.
I live in the US, albeit one of the poorer states. I do, however, make nearly twice the median household income. My mortgage consumes approximately one-quarter of my after-tax income.
But $200 is definitely a significant amount of money to me. Nearly all my money is spent on necessities - by which I mean food, electricity, medical, propane, gas, household and car repairs, etc. I am left over with a few hundred dollars a month in "spending" money, of which I prefer to save at least half. I am definitely not spending that in an endeavor to comfort myself with a bunch of junk.
But it would take some serious consideration and a really, really good reason for me to spend an extra $200 on a product. There must be some extra use case extremely important to me to justify spending an extra $200 - just better design or some bonus functionality is not sufficient. That said, I do take longevity into account - I am typing this on a nearly 8 year old Dell laptop - because I try to look at the total cost, and buying a replacement factors into that.
In my experience, people either do what I do, or just give up altogether and buy cheap because that's all they can afford and its Good Enough.
It's difficult for me to even fathom having the attitude that "if you can't spend $200 more, you don't need it." I would argue that I do "need" a tablet (as far as anyone does) - I travel frequently and it would be very nice to have, and even when I am at work I walk around a lot. But I'm not looking at an iPad and cost is the main consideration there. For me it's down the a Kindle Fire (cheap, OK for consumption, call this a probably) or Surface Pro (expensive, but would be much more useful for my use cases, but not very likely because of cost.)
This statement seems totally divorced from my reality.
I live in the US, albeit one of the poorer states. I do, however, make nearly twice the median household income. My mortgage consumes approximately one-quarter of my after-tax income.
But $200 is definitely a significant amount of money to me. Nearly all my money is spent on necessities - by which I mean food, electricity, medical, propane, gas, household and car repairs, etc. I am left over with a few hundred dollars a month in "spending" money, of which I prefer to save at least half. I am definitely not spending that in an endeavor to comfort myself with a bunch of junk.
But it would take some serious consideration and a really, really good reason for me to spend an extra $200 on a product. There must be some extra use case extremely important to me to justify spending an extra $200 - just better design or some bonus functionality is not sufficient. That said, I do take longevity into account - I am typing this on a nearly 8 year old Dell laptop - because I try to look at the total cost, and buying a replacement factors into that.
In my experience, people either do what I do, or just give up altogether and buy cheap because that's all they can afford and its Good Enough.
It's difficult for me to even fathom having the attitude that "if you can't spend $200 more, you don't need it." I would argue that I do "need" a tablet (as far as anyone does) - I travel frequently and it would be very nice to have, and even when I am at work I walk around a lot. But I'm not looking at an iPad and cost is the main consideration there. For me it's down the a Kindle Fire (cheap, OK for consumption, call this a probably) or Surface Pro (expensive, but would be much more useful for my use cases, but not very likely because of cost.)