I bought my first computer in June 1995.  It was a Toshiba laptop – MONOCHROME – several inches thick.  It cost me $1600 and ran Windows 3.1.  I could have upgraded to a color screen for another $200, but I couldn’t imagine why I would ever need color when all I would ever need a computer for was dial-up email and light & easy documents.  I sold it two years later for $200, so basically I spent $700 a year for the capability of having dial-up Internet.  What a great investment!

I replaced that clunker with a new Toshiba (with color) top-of-the-line model.  It ran Windows 98, had an amazing 300 MB hard drive, and the other specs basically knocked the socks off of every tech friend I had.  It was an amazing machine.  It should have been for the $2500 I paid for it.  Within the first couple months of purchasing it, the screen went blank.  It had a warranty, but I was living in Vietnam where there were no warranty centers.  So I had to fly to Bangkok, drop it off at a warranty center and wait for it to be fixed.  My flight and accommodations in Bangkok cost me about $500.  After I got it fixed, I worked that one hard and it served us well for about 5 years until it officially turned itself into “clunker” status as well.  I sold it at a garage sale in 2006 for $20.

I bought a top of the line Dell desktop in the fall of 2004 that cost me $1500.  It had a sweet LCD display, two DVD drives, a massive 60GB harddrive, firewire, Windows XP – all the bells and whistles.  Within a month, the whole thing didn’t work.  Luckily it was still under warranty and a guy showed up and replaced basically every important part of the CPU.  That machine lasted us 6 years until I finally gave it away to a charity.

I bought a new laptop in summer 2005 – a Gateway – for around $1000.  It seemed really cheap compared to my last one, but had amazing features like a 40 GB hard-drive and it ran Windows XP.  About three years in, the internal connection to the power cord broke.  Of course, no warranty.  I had someone rip it apart and attempt to solder through the problem.  It worked for another two weeks and then died permanently.  It’s still sitting in my closet.

I bought a Dell Netbook in 2009 for about $350.  Everybody loved it at first, but now all my kids complain that it’s two slow and it just sits there.

I bought an all-in-one Dell touch-screen desktop for about $1200 in January 2011.  It’s still a nice machine.  It’s got a very fast processor that can crank out anything including heavy video editing, 1 TB hard-drive and some other very cool features.  We shall see how long it will last.

Luckily, my work provides me with a laptop now which is upgraded every two years, so I don’t plan on buying another personal one for a while.  I did, however, purchase 2 iPADs for our family – each one at $500.

So for my entire life, I have given these tech companies over $9200.  What do I currently have to show for it?

A net financial loss of $8980.

One broken laptop.

A Netbook nobody uses.

Two functioning iPADs which the kids (mostly) use for games.

One desktop that we use for homework and playing music.

Hmmmm.  I don’t know.  Are computers the worst financial investment ever?

Thoughts anyone?