I can get a new computer for that price!

How many technicians have heard a customer say they could get a new computer for the price of the repair?  Alot I’m sure.  I know I’ve heard it a few times and my prices are highly competitive.  The thing is, there’s more to the price than just the cost of the computer itself.  Also, the statement alone is an outright lie!  You can not purchase a new computer for less than $300-$400 unless it’s a netbook.  You can certainly buy refurbished computers for much less than that.  There are some new desktop computers you can find from major brand names as low as $350 but you’re not getting certain features you may want and you never get install disks incase something goes wrong.

Something else to consider when purchasing a new computer is transferring data, reconfiguring email, personalizing everything how you had it before, and reinstalling all your programs again.  Assuming you can do all this yourself, you are only out the cost of the new computer, which is the same price or a little more than repairing a worst case scenario on a not so old computer, but you also need to invest alot of time.  So how much is your time worth?  If you need to hire someone to do some of this, you could be paying another couple hundred dollars possibly.  So in this case, getting a new computer costs so much more than repairing what you already have.

If you are repairing a computer that is new enough and think you can get a new computer for less money, not only can you not get one for less money that is new, but you probably won’t get any better of a computer than you currently have because the only new computers that are cheap enough would be approximately the same speed as what you currently have.  So with that said, there’s no point in buying the new computer.  So if you repair your computer, you are getting the same speed for the same price as buying that new refurbished computer, but the bonus is all your data and programs are still on your computer, so you don’t have to deal with all that.

The only time it’s worth getting a new computer rather that repairing what you have is if it’s over 3-4 years old and requires more than a couple hundred dollars in repairs.  Otherwise, you could invest that money into a new computer since the old one could have another component fail anytime.