> On the other hand all things are not equal. Take laptops. You might think that a cheap one that costs a quarter of an expensive model would mean that you change it more often for the same cost.
> By the end of the upgrade cycle you'd probably have a faster cheap laptop than the original expensive one and that might be true but you'd also have to live with the cheap keyboard and the cheap screen and the cheap build quality of the case.
It isn't actually the case that the cheap laptop would be faster, unfortunately. It's not an apples-to-apples comparison, but my $1000 i5 MacBook Air from 2013 is still a snappier machine than a recent $250 Celeron Chromebook.
> By the end of the upgrade cycle you'd probably have a faster cheap laptop than the original expensive one and that might be true but you'd also have to live with the cheap keyboard and the cheap screen and the cheap build quality of the case.
It isn't actually the case that the cheap laptop would be faster, unfortunately. It's not an apples-to-apples comparison, but my $1000 i5 MacBook Air from 2013 is still a snappier machine than a recent $250 Celeron Chromebook.