July 23, 2006

The Peril's of Purchasing The Latest Technology

I've got a friend, who always has the latest and greatest technology. If he was a journalist, I could understand as we always have gadgets that we are reviewing (and returning back to the manufacturer). If you can afford and simply must have the latest and greatest gadgets that's fine. However, for most of you, concentrating on running your business, don't feel compelled to buy the latest technology - just because it's come out.

There's two benefits when you wait to buy technology:

1. When you wait to buy not-fresh-off-the-assembly-line technology you save money. Cnet writes that the Motorola Q (which I am reviewing and like a lot) could drop in price from $200 to $50 by the end of the year.

When you are the first person (or first thousands of persons) to buy a product you pay a premium for it. Sure you've got bragging rights, but do you want bragging rights or a cost effective technology buying purchasing road map.

2. The second reason to NOT be the first business on the block to buy technology is that you can avoid many of the initial glitches (especially when it relates to software) that first time users experience. Let others be volunteer "testers" for new hardware or software products. After a few months manufactures usually issue some kind of patches or updates to the initial versions of their products. Computer products are more stable than software packages, so when a computer vendor produces a new notebook computer, that's ok to purchase.

0 comments