What Dictates the Price of a Laptop?
Laptops have, for a long time, been thought of as being extremely expensive to buy, and even more expensive to repair. While this is true for laptops dedicated to gaming and high end graphic applications, when it comes to the general computer user, this does not have to be the case.
What makes a laptop so expensive has to do with the hardware that goes into the system when it is built. In a gaming laptop, the hardware that is used is the newest available on the market, and is usually overclocked to increase its performance. This overclocking leads to a great amount of heat buildup, which means that even more hardware will have to be dedicated to keeping the laptop cool. If the laptop were to overheat, the equipment would be damaged severely.
For a more general use laptop system, the hardware that can go into it can not only be a generation or two behind what is currently available, it does not have to be as technologically advanced.
For example, in a gaming laptop, it is common to find large hard drives and multiple core CPUs. A laptop that would be great for surfing the Internet, watching videos, and playing games of a less advanced nature would only require a hard drive of around 100 GB, and a single or dual core processor.
This kind of technology is cheap to buy, and is commonly available. This means the manufacturers can buy this hardware in bulk, and pass the savings on to you, the end consumer.
Manufacturers are building new laptop systems with a value price in mind, with smaller screen sizes, and lower scale hard drives. One of the benefits of getting one of these laptops from the manufacturers directly is that they are not cheap knockoffs. Some of the most reliable laptop manufacturers in the world have been building this type of system, and it is possible to find laptops under $300 that fit these specifications.
While having a smaller screen size may seem a disadvantage, it is easy to connect a laptop to a TV or external monitor, and avoid the discomfort of a smaller screen size.
In the end, your needs will dictate how much you are willing to pay for a new laptop system. However, bear in mind that you do not have to have the most advanced technology to be able to do anything that is commonly done today.