New computer for Christmas? Wait.

Do you think Apple’s getting a bit too cocky with its ‘cool’ sales pitch?
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Anyway, should you be buying a PC? Or a Mac? Simple answer is no, unless the kids are going to kill Santa otherwise. There are some staggeringly good deals out there just now: I’ve seen a few surprisingly good laptops advertised for as little as £299, and plenty under £400. So what’s the catch?
Simple. Lots of big things arriving in January. Microsoft is (finally!) releasing the new version of Windows on 30 January, and it needs some pretty serious hardware to get the most out of it.  Meanwhile, Apple is expected to make some big product announcements on 9 January.
If you buy something now, it’ll work fine for years. So much these days is happening via the web anyway, so the operating system doesn’t matter anything like as much as it used to. But you’re going to feel short-changed if you spend money this month, when you see what’s coming next month.

3 thoughts on “New computer for Christmas? Wait.”

  1. So agree. I want a new laptop and had a browse round Tottenham Court Road when I was in London on Tuesday. Some very attractive deals on offer – nearly everywhere was willing to double the RAM for no extra cost. Still I’ve decided to wait until Vista comes out.

  2. I agree that the OS soon won’t matter. I recently switched to Ubuntu – I’ve got no desire to subject myself to the pain of Vista and almost everything on I do on the PC is web based anyway.
    I don’t doubt that the future of computing is simple that the network will become the computer. Our PCs will effectively become thin clients. Before this can happen though, a more accessible and robust platform needs to be in place, instead of relying on AJAX. As Bill Thompson writes:

    There is a massive difference between rewriting Web pages on the fly with Javascript and reengineering the network to support message passing between distributed objects, a difference that too many Web 2.0 advocates seem willing to ignore. It may have been twenty years since Sun Microsystems trademarked the phrase ‘the network is the computer’ but we’re still a decade off delivering, and if we stick with Ajax there is a real danger that we will never get there.

  3. Yup, all those promises made for Xmas…still, face of happy child more than makes up for January loss – I guess 🙂
    Besides, I always wait a year for the newest MSFT OS to have all its “features” ironed out

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