Kiplinger Magazine’s The Best Vs. The Bargains
Kiplinger is a big name in the financial world. So you know the recession is still going on strong when they publish a cover story about Gold Standards vs. “Value Options.”
The feature offers up the top of the line in Restaurants to Technology to Financial Services, and those are then stacked up against more wallet friendly options. And like this Affordable Men’s Style website that you’re reading, Kiplinger’s makes a key distinction. There’s a critical difference between maximizing your money, and being plain old cheap. Quality is still an absolute necessity.
For Dappered, we could easily find you a cheaper shirt, watch, or pair of shoes at Walmart. But why buy it if you wouldn’t want to wear it? Same philosophy with this list from Kiplinger’s. They’re not comparing a Yugo to a Mercedes. It’s a savvy list for a smart consumer. Here’s our favorites:
BEST vs. BARGAINS – CARS: Lexus RX 350 – $39,000 VS. Ford Edge – $32,000
Not only is the Edge made by the one American Automaker that didn’t take a bailout, it just plain looks better. If you live in a city but need 4-Wheel Drive Capability for bad weather conditions (who wants to go skiing?) the Edge gives you better looks in a less expensive package.
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BEST vs. BARGAINS – LAPTOPS: Macbook – $1000 VS. HP Pavillion – $600
There’s a huge segment of the population that swears by their Macs. And that’s great. I’m just not sure what a Macbook is going to do noticeably better than an HP Pavillion for the average web surfing, word processing, excel spreadsheet using consumer. $400 is a lot of money to sway an undecided. Color us biased, but the HP Pavilion has been pretty good to Dappered.com.
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BEST vs. BARGAINS – WINE: Chateau Leoville ’06 – $55 VS. Casa Lapostolle Cab. ’07 – $19
Like computers, I don’t know what a $55 bottle of red is going to do for the average consumer compared to a $19 bottle. If you drink wine often, you probably have a good idea that a $55 bottle is going to be way more complex, deep, and an all around experience. But a $19 bottle won’t make you feel too guilty when you open it on a random Thursday night. The world needs great under $25/bottle (and good under $10/bottle) wine. It keeps the work week tolerable.
Want more? Click here for the Entire List of Best vs. Bargains. Including Travel, Investments, and Real Estate.
Want Even more? Click Here for the Podcast about how the story all came together.
Here are two points that stand out to me. Ford makes good rental cars. The Fords I have owned and my parents have owned are good early in their life, but once they get to the 5 year mark you begin to pay more than their value to keep them running. The engine design of Fords pretty much requires you to remove the engine to do most repairs. Not to mention Ford always makes you put on 2 different sized windshield wipers. Other than Jeep or Buick, there aren’t a lot of American cars that excite me. And I buy cars for practicality not style.
For home computer use, I agree with buy a cheaper HP or sometimes even a Dell. Just make sure it isn’t running Windows Vista. What a piece. Just upgraded my laptop to Windows 7. What a difference.
My Macbook was worth the difference 🙂 <3
Really? Why’s that? And I ask that seriously. You a graphic designer or something?
I’m a web developer. For me, it’s Mac or Linux, for numerous reasons: I like to have command-line access to the operating system, ssh, scp, and other command-line tools for networking. Running development web servers on a Mac or linux is just easier and more intuitive than on Windows, not to mention most scripting languages (ruby, python, perl) are native on mac/linux, whereas you need to install special binaries for windows.
The Macbook Pro is ideal, because I do not like wasting my time setting up and maintaining a linux computer (I do that enough on my servers), but I have all the benefits that I described above. Also, some of the best programming tools are Mac-only, such as Textmate, Coda, etc. Finally, I do also do a bit of graphics work (though not professionally), and I enjoy the mac better for those reasons too.
I admit, Ubuntu and the like is getting better every day.. it just isn’t to the point, yet, where you can install it and never have to worry about anything. There is always some roundabout sound driver you need to install or yada yada. The Mac’s set-it-and-forget-it mentality is awesome, in that I’ve never had to fix anything and most applications are installed by simply clicking and dragging to your applications folder.
And that’s precisely my point. Allow me to let my ego run wild by quoting myself… “I’m just not sure what a Macbook is going to do noticeably better than an HP Pavillion for the average web surfing, word processing, excel spreadsheet using consumer.” Then for you, yes, the extra $400 is totally worth it. But for run of the mill people or even those who have a slightly higher knowledge of the web, computers, etc…. will there really be a $400 difference?
Having both Apple and PC, they both have their merits. The feel of a Macbook Pro is so solid and polished that it just begs to be held, however therein lies a problem… the Macbook gets hot, crazy hot when being used. By comparison, I can play games on my Lenovo and not even notice the temperature. In fact some days the aluminum, where my hands rest, gets so hot I stop what I am doing. As to comments about coding, I run Visual Studio and there isn’t a IDE on earth that compares. Granted it costs a fortune, but you get what you pay for. Putty pretty much covers CLI interfaces and since I run multiple VMs on my laptop I can switch back and forth between native environments seamlessly. I have been running Fusion for a while on my Mac, but it doesn’t compare to HyperV or Vmware Workstation. The sad thing is I know my Lenovo is a better machine than my Macbook, but I still keep going back to the Macbook because it is so pretty. I think that describes most of my relationships, so this computer problem is mirrored in my personal life.
Funny they mention the Edge and the Lexus, I was comparing the two the other day and thought the Edge to be a much nicer SUV. Fully optioned the Lexus is very nice, although that ads 15-20k to the price tag. But, with similar packages “Limited” on the Edge and “Premium” on the RX350 the Edge seemed to be nicer. The Lexus was quieter and seemed a bit more plush driving around. However the Edge had more ‘pep’ and was more entertaining to drive (we are talking about an SUV here, so nothing spectacular). The Lexus seems to have more room in the boot, but in terms of interior, I will give the Edge the edge. The steering wheel on the Edge felt like it was coated in vinyl (they said it was leather), but the visual look of the interior was much better and it didn’t look like a leather covered Civic (my impression of the Lexus interior). Last there was the price 45K for the Lexus and 34K for the Edge (with every option they had). I think I will picking the Ford, actually I am waiting on the 2011 Edge, which really does blow everything else out of the water, but I expect to spend closer to 40K on that.
I could write a book of “The Best vs. the Bargains: Liquor Edition” because that’s where I like to save money. I feel so bad for people who blow $40 on Grey Goose or Bombay Sapphire.
Pay the extra $400 for the macbook. I owned a dell in college (top of the line at the time) and it just got slower and slower and I had to have the dell guy come and work on it twice over about a 4 year period. When I started law school, I opted for the mac. I have not regreted it one day. It took a little while to get used to, but the graphics, speed, and use-ability beat a pc any day. Plus, I have had it over three years now and it has not slowed down one bit. It will still boot up and be ready to go in about 10 seconds as opposed to the average 3 1/2 year old pc which will take 10 minutes to boot up.
Matt, I agree the macbook definitely get’s hot. I don’t really care that much though, I have a pretty sweet dual-monitor setup with my macbook up on a stand so it gets plenty of ventilation.
About Visual Studio, to each his own I guess. I do web development, so I have no use for the built-in compiler in VS since I work with interpreted languages. Aside from that it is just a big bucket of bloat. I’d take textmate over that any day. As for putty, yes I’ve used it. Putty is ok for connecting to servers, but pales in comparison to iTerm, or even Terminal. Multiple tabs, unlimited scroll buffer, and numerous other features give a clear advantage over putty. I do continue to use that, though, if and when I need to be in windows for one reason or another. Finally, I do run VMs too so that I can test in all browsers on all operating systems. The nice thing about doing so with a VM software (fusion, parralells, etc) in Mac is that you do get access to all OS’s. Since Mac is a closed OS, so to speak, you can’t do the same from within windows (legally or easily at least).
So you’re comparing your 3 year old Mac to a 3 year old PC. Except the PC was bought 4 years before the Mac. So by the time your Mac was 3 years old, you were comparing its start-up time to the PC which had been running previously on technology that was now 7 years obselete.
And you’re going to school to be a lawyer? Good luck with that. You’d be fun on cross-examination.
HP laptops are garbage. Pure and simple they have about a 1 year life. The second the warranty expires HP laptops become ticking time bombs.