[ansimionescu]

I bought an iMac in 2012 for £860 (student discount, original price £1000) and sold it one and a half years later for £600.

I also bought a 13" Sony Vaio S for around £1200 in 2011 and had to sell it 6 months later, because it was a total piece of shit. I got £650 for it.

So I'd argue that buying cheap plastic crap is in fact the non-budget option.

[Pxtl]

It's frustrating to see Sony fail like that - Sony was Apple back when Apple was doomed. I keep waiting for a Win32/Android company to position themselves as "Apple without the Apple OS". Sony has succeeded there with the Xperia line, but their laptops don't reflect that.

[rsynnott]

According to the former president of Sony, Apple kind of agreed: http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/02/05/steve-jobs-wanted-...

[mikeash]

That's how it always is. See the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-ri...