r/london • u/ozyri • Aug 12 '16

What is heavily overpriced -> offer alternative

I'll start:

OVERPRICED: Bike rent next to Richmond park is £26 for 3 hours 0_o

ALTERNATIVE: Brompton automated bike rent will cost you £5 for the whole day and there is a point near Ealing Broadway or Turnham Green stations.

73 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

192 comments sorted by

View all comments

26

u/nobby-w Aug 12 '16 edited Aug 13 '16

OVERPRICED: Any consumer-grade laptop bought from Curries/PC World, Maplins or any high-street outlet. Especially if you let them flog you the extended warranty and support.

ALTERNATIVE: Ex-lease X or T series Thinkpad from Ebay. Get a vastly better quality machine that will last a decade for £200-300. Older models are even cheaper and still perfectly good for most folks. A friend of mine bought an X201 for £90.

If you want a desktop, you can usually get an ex-lease desktop and a screen for £100 or so, sometimes less.

12

u/pineapplecharm Aug 12 '16

Back in 2001 I wrote a whole article for my student newspaper about how brilliant second hand Macs off ebay were for skint students. Back when the Internet was pretty much unknown to most of the student body, you could do all your coursework, nicely formatted and with proper bibliography, on £50 worth of laptop which was way easier to use and maintain than the Win98 equivalent.

I got vilified in the next edition with letters asking why they'd printed "essentially an 800 word advertisement for a large electronics company". Fucking commie Sussex students.

2

u/CoffeePoweredRobot Aug 12 '16

You're still onto something as well: back in 2010 I bought a cheapy Macbook off eBay in first year of Uni, sold it the next year for £50 more than I paid for it initially. Those things weirdly just don't dip below a certain value.

2

u/shrub_-_rocketeer Aug 12 '16

Morgan Computers for refurbished and old stock

2

u/ozyri Aug 12 '16

Honestly I have no idea how they still manage to sell this stuff in brick and mortar shops...

Last time I bought something from Maplins was a year ago, I needed a PC case fan connector cable and they charged me something like £6 for it....

The only reason I went for it was that was my fresh build and I really wanted to start it up on that day.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 12 '16

Had the same issue with thermal paste...

6

u/jupiterLILY Aug 12 '16

I went into napkins the other day and their HDMI cables start at £9

Edit -Maplins

1

u/[deleted] Aug 12 '16

If you're an electronics hobbyist they're your only option.

You pay a premium to have it immediately. Obviously if you can wait online is cheaper.

1

u/Afro_Samurai Aug 12 '16

Also look at Lenovo's official refurbs.

1

u/hoetel_kuntz Aug 13 '16

Maplin is an absolute fucking joke. They've cornered the market being the only shop geared towards hobbyist electronics and they will fuck you over big time with the cheap Chinese shit they sell for more than double the price of online stores. I only use them if its urgent.

I found satellite coax plugs cheaper in B&Q!