Worse With Age

One of the most important functions we perform is to keep readers up to date about what’s going on in the markets and which products are the current best value-for-money picks. Unlike many other types of products, PC components have very short shelf lives. The pace of this industry results in new generations of major products roughly every year, and new models of individual parts at least three times as often. I’m not saying that all technology products are doomed to becoming useless within a few months of being purchased, but they might not remain the best choices for very long.

Sadly, all products shipped out of a factory are not sold when they’re within their prime, and thousands of four- or five-year-old motherboards, graphics cards and game consoles lie in warehouses and store displays until they’re sold to unwitting customers. I can still see GeForce 6600 and Radeon X1950 cards which should have disappeared half a decade ago being sold on the streets at their original prices despite current models being available cheaper. Online stores have vast collections too, with almost no indication of product age. If you weren’t familiar with Nvidia and ATI’s businesses you might have no way of knowing how many new models have been released since these were good cards to buy. And if you didn’t study their naming and numbering schemes, you might never know whether a GeForce 8800GTX or a GeForce GTX280 is the better buy today. It’s not that they won’t work—you’d still get better graphics than most onboard systems can manage—but you won’t have any idea how much you’ve missed out on. These cards could still be great bargains if they were priced according to their ages, but that is rarely, if ever, the case.

And if old parts aren’t being sold openly, they’re quietly being shoved inside new PCs. Neighborhood assemblers and big brands alike hardly ever specify the chipsets they use. All too often, I see brand new PCs with recent CPUs on ancient motherboards. Again, these feel quite fast to those who are upgrading after years. But in a little while when they want to add a hard drive, they’ll discover they don’t have enough SATA ports. Or they’ll try to play a high-definition movie clip, and discover their onboard graphics are completely unable to handle it.

Apple’s latest iPod nano and touch models are physically identical when seen in their retail packaging, and bear no indication of their generations. The new nano has a video camera, while the new higher-capacity touches have faster CPUs for better gaming. Both devices have twice as much storage space as their predecessors for roughly the same price. Both old and new models are currently in the market. Parents shopping for gifts wouldn’t ordinarily expect there to be any ambiguity to the devices, but they too could wind up with less than what they deserve for their money.

In this day and age, buyers have to be aware of what they’re in the market for. Check model numbers online and search around for news of the companies whose products you’re thinking of buying. A little background checking could save you from being cheated and help get you the best value for your money.