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| Unless you really need a computer now, wait until you can get a great deal on super discount. |
Freelancing from home requires three things: a quiet place to work, a good smartphone, and a computer. I work from a laptop so that I can take my work everywhere I go. When my wife and I travel that computer comes with us. Should I admit that in public? But I can't live without the computer. It's my main source of income. I might get an order on a weekend when we're staying at her parents. A good computer should take you a long way. But how much should you spend on a computer?
Since I began my freelancing life I have owned several computers. I began with a tower PC. I thought I would need all the power of a tower. That was a mistake for two reasons. First, I hated carting that thing around when we drove out of state for the weekend. Second, it was more computer than I needed.
I had a 24-inch wide screen display. It was beautiful. We could watch movies on it. I would put on my headphones and sit back and watch all my old favorites. And I didn't get any work done.
Movie time should be reserved for after you finish your daily tasks. So I eventually sold my tower to a friend who needed an extra computer for his son. They got a great deal because they juiced up the motherboard with extra memory and a gaming chip. Casey had a blast playing his games on that PC for a couple of years.
My next computer was an expensive laptop. I paid about $2000 for it. Ouch! I am still kicking myself over that one. Why did I put so much money into a laptop? Because "laptops are not as powerful as desktop computers". I thought I had to compensate for something. My wife still jokingly says I was compensating for the wrong thing. Honey, that's one joke I don't appreciate.
We still have that computer. I play games on it. That's how much memory and processing power it had. The 17-inch screen is nice, too. But it was too much computer for freelance work. I was still working a full-time job when I bought that computer so I thought the freelance work would pay for it and I wouldn't miss the money. But $2000 is still $2000.
You can buy computers on monthly payment plans. I'd never done that until last year. I know it's an easy way to get into some nice stuff but it's expensive. So what changed my mind?
Well, the $2000 laptop doesn't have all the latest things. I've heard you can upgrade laptops but you have to take them apart to do it. I was afraid I would mess it up. And it is still worth $2000 to me even though I would be lucky if I could sell it for $500 today.
My wife started watching QVC last year and she noticed they had a Christmas special on HP laptops. I've always bought Dell computers but I thought, okay, this doesn't look so bad. The payment plan looked weird to me. It was a Buy Now, Pay Later deal. QVC does those all the time and we've agreed if we can't pay for something all at once we won't buy it.
But this was a one-time deal. I thought QVC was selling end-of-year stuff the vendors don't want but I looked up the specs on their computer. It was state-of-the-art technology. And it was under $700 for a pretty good computer. It didn't take me long to sign up for the deal.
This is a good computer that should last me several years. It should pay for itself quickly. The older computer was still doing great but I have the latest version of Windows, a touch screen, better Wi-Fi connections, and more. I guess old laptops don't age as well as I thought they would.
I finally realized that even though I don't need a lot of computing power just to do freelance writing, it's nice to get a lot for a low price. My budget going forward for any new computer is under $1000. I prefer anything under $750. I don't need another computer right now but if I were to buy one I would not be afraid to buy a less expensive laptop.
Half the battle with Internet speed is your connection anyway. We get over 100mbps with our cable and that is good enough. The other half of the battle is having a decent computer. I have that. I have two of them. I don't play those massive online games that require every watt of computing juice you can afford. I still listen on my headphones. I've been tempted to buy some nice speakers but I really don't need them for what I do.
And that is my bottom line: if I don't need the technology to make money then I really don't want it.
