Buy For Your Personal Needs or Resale??

[JusChexin]

Hey Everyone,

I'm so confused and would appreciate any advice you could give me. I have been looking forward to buying a MBA for a long time, and I think the current Rev finally suits my needs. After checking the different models out at the Apple Store and reading these forums for years, I'm sold on the 11" model. However, I'm conflicted, as far as spending my own money and making an "investment" as to if it's better to buy the model that fits my needs best, or to buy a better model for "resale value".

I currently have a mid-2007 C2D white Macbook and I don't think I want to wait 4 years between upgrading laptop models again. I have heard that Apple resale values are the best if you upgrade every cycle or so, and besides the hassle of trying to sell your old model on Ebay/Craigslist/or wherever every time, that it can make financial sense to upgrade frequently (as opposed to buying Applecare and holding on to your old model as long as I've held on to this one). Plus -- you get the benefit of a new model every cycle, which, as a tech fan, why wouldn't you want to??

The only real question I'm having is whether I guy a MBA for my own personal needs, or a higher model that is probably beyond my needs, for better resale. I am NOT a power user and NOT a media junkie. I think the 11" i5 128GB would be fine for my usage of mostly MS Word, Safari, reading PDF's, scanning documents into readable OCR PDF's, the occasional SIMS3 game and upcoming Star Wars The Old Republic game. However, I understand the i7 256GB model might hold its resale value better going forward? It's probably more than I currently need, but if it pays for itself... However, the upfront cost of being $450 more than what I think I currently need seems a bit steep.

If anyone has any advice to this end, I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks so much!

 

[simply stunning]

First off, if you want better resale, you have it backwards. You want the cheapest one. Just look at last years 13" ultimate, and how much it is selling for rite now. The difference I'm seeing in the sale price from the base model to the upper model doesn't hold the same. Reason being is the base moddle drops a little bit, and the upper moddle drops a lot, as those looking to buy these upper level computers are the ones that are out buying the newest moddle. So I would never spend $450 more just to have resale value that was $300 more...


On another note, I would try to never buy something way more than I need on a "tool" that I'm planning on not using. It would be like gambeling that it would hold its value.

 

[eyespii]

Hey Everyone,

I'm so confused and would appreciate any advice you could give me. I have been looking forward to buying a MBA for a long time, and I think the current Rev finally suits my needs. After checking the different models out at the Apple Store and reading these forums for years, I'm sold on the 11" model. However, I'm conflicted, as far as spending my own money and making an "investment" as to if it's better to buy the model that fits my needs best, or to buy a better model for "resale value".

I currently have a mid-2007 C2D white Macbook and I don't think I want to wait 4 years between upgrading laptop models again. I have heard that Apple resale values are the best if you upgrade every cycle or so, and besides the hassle of trying to sell your old model on Ebay/Craigslist/or wherever every time, that it can make financial sense to upgrade frequently (as opposed to buying Applecare and holding on to your old model as long as I've held on to this one). Plus -- you get the benefit of a new model every cycle, which, as a tech fan, why wouldn't you want to??

The only real question I'm having is whether I guy a MBA for my own personal needs, or a higher model that is probably beyond my needs, for better resale. I am NOT a power user and NOT a media junkie. I think the 11" i5 128GB would be fine for my usage of mostly MS Word, Safari, reading PDF's, scanning documents into readable OCR PDF's, the occasional SIMS3 game and upcoming Star Wars The Old Republic game. However, I understand the i7 256GB model might hold its resale value better going forward? It's probably more than I currently need, but if it pays for itself... However, the upfront cost of being $450 more than what I think I currently need seems a bit steep.

If anyone has any advice to this end, I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks so much!

Get the cheapest one possible. the upgraded models lose their value way faster than the base models.

 

[JusChexin]

Thanks guys!! This really helped. For some reason, I had it backward in my head that with Apple products the higher end models held their values more -- but it makes a lot of sense that someone in the market for a high end model would just as soon buy the new model instead of last year's model.

Thanks again -- looks like you both saved me $450!

 

[jenzjen]

If you want to be exact, then higher priced models DO have higher resale value, but the key item is not maximizing resale value but minimizing your losses, does that make sense?

Let's assume you buy some upgrades for +500, then maybe you'll see an extra +150 back when you go to sell.

Was resale value higher, sure, by 150. But, this wasn't smart, as you ended up losing an additional 350.