A question is often posed, as to how the vendors of cheap laptops manage to offer them at such low prices. We are looking at a situation where the typical cheap laptop may be costing as little as 50% or even 20% of what a similar machine goes for at ordinary laptop stores. Many of us, brought up on the ‘trade-offs theory’ would want to know what they are likely to have to give up on, to access these cheap laptops, because the price differences simply look too huge.
As it turns out, it is not just technical compromises that make some laptops cheap. There are cases where the cheap laptops happen to be machines which people in desperate need give to pawnshop owners, to be given various quick credit facilities. When, at the expiry of the credit period, the said people are unable to repay what was advanced to them, the laptops they gave have to auctioned – typically at very low prices, as the pawnshop owner typically wants the money fast to keep the business moving. The laptops in question may be technically sound, or even exceptionally sophisticated, but in the face of those circumstances, would end up being bought for a song by some lucky chap.
We may also be looking at cases where people decide to upgrade (by buying another model of laptop), and where just before doing so, they decide to dispose of their current laptops at any price. That way, you would end up with a very strong laptop going for a song.
All that is not to say technical compromises are never made to make cheap laptop pricing a possibility. Often, that is the case. We are looking at, for instance, situation where cheap laptops are being sold cheaply on account of things like their limited computing speeds, limited random access memories and limited secondary storage and so on. But these can be mitigated. Take the case of limited secondary storage. With a several dollar investment on an external hard drive, you can very easily end up boosting secondary storage capacities significantly.