As less as it gets

A friend was asking buying advice for a netbook. I had recommended several brands, although she opened the conversation with the latest Lenovo IdeaPad being top of mind. This was a portable that I featured a couple of days ago. I shot her more options — that same Lenovo without the swivel / touch screen, the ACER Aspire One, the HP mini.

Curiously, I asked what her budget was and she told me that it was a maximum of PHP 30,000 to which I recommended a very healthy Sony VAIO M or to just forego the ultra portables and opt for a “traditional” laptop. These days, all brands sell decent laptops between PHP 24k-30k.

Then I realized how this little netbook and “ultra slim” market don’t seem to follow the standard laws of consumerism and instead follow trends in fashion, most common being that “less is more.” That two piece bikini is just as expensive as the pair of pants and shirt combined. The fashionably “torn up” jeans off the rack is more expensive than the pair of jeans you subject to natural wear and tear.

A mid-range laptop can actually be cheaper than an ultra light portable that doesn’t come with a DVD drive. “High end” netbooks are more expensive than laptops that have bigger screens, a bigger keyboard, an optical drive, and 3D graphics card. A DSLR with a mirror shutter is so much cheaper than a micro 4/3 that foregoes the mirror yet remains more or less the same in quality.

This is today’s world of computing. It may not make sense, but hey whatever makes computers more appealing to everyone right?