Need opinions on what to get for next laptop.



  •  Yo guys,

     I'm planning on getting myself a new laptop for when I'm out and about, but not 100% sure on what to pick up. Basically looking for something thats as portable as possible but runs Windows 7, VS 2008, Expression 3, Photoshop CS3 as smooth as possible, while keeping cost as low as possible.

    I, so far, was mainly looking at the 12" to 13" range with  http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=448267 for 640 EUR comping out on top.

    However, I'm not used to such low resolution screens (last time I had a screen at that resolution was about 4 years ago) and don't know if it's suitable for development or not.Or should Ipop onto Dell and fork out a bit more and get myself a 15" with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 and a decent radeon dedicated graphics card.



  • Visual studio is very usable at the lower res if you remove a lot of toolbars and make everything auto hide tabs.  If you're writing C# code, it's pretty responsive overall on small hardware except when compiling.  I find visual C++ to lag a lot on my fujitsu S2110 ... enough that I have to turn off intellisense completely, so consider getting beefy hardware if you're writing C++ code in visual studio and like intellisense.



  • @Hitsuji said:

     Yo guys,

     I'm planning on getting myself a new laptop for when I'm out and about, but not 100% sure on what to pick up. Basically looking for something thats as portable as possible but runs Windows 7, VS 2008, Expression 3, Photoshop CS3 as smooth as possible, while keeping cost as low as possible.

    I, so far, was mainly looking at the 12" to 13" range with  http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=448267 for 640 EUR comping out on top.

    However, I'm not used to such low resolution screens (last time I had a screen at that resolution was about 4 years ago) and don't know if it's suitable for development or not.Or should Ipop onto Dell and fork out a bit more and get myself a 15" with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 and a decent radeon dedicated graphics card.

     

    If you aren't used to small screens, I recommend getting 15."  13" is very small.



  • @tster said:

    13" is very small.

    Your mom didn't seem to think so...



  • @arty said:

    so consider getting beefy hardware if you're writing C++ code in visual studio and like intellisense.

    Well that laptop itself is powered by a dual 2.26GHz processor from 1 generation ago and has 4GB RAM, so that shouldn't be a problem.

    @tster said:

    If you aren't used to small screens, I recommend getting 15."  13" is very small.

    It's not that I'm not used to small screens, I'm just not used to such a low resolution in conjunction with such apps which usually required a high resolution to get the most out of the apps (especially photoshop/Blend).

     I do own a 1st gen eeePC (800x480 resolution). While it's possible to run the mentioned apps, usabilty is non exisitant at that resolution.



  • Photoshop will be your biggest resource hog.  VS2008 isn't really that bad in comparison.  I run vista, photoshop cs4 extended, lightroom 2.0, Expression studio, VS 2008 all on my laptop fine and its a few years old.  2gb ram and 1.5gh processor.  You can easily get a much better system these days so you shouldn't have an issue.



  • Whatever you do, no matter what, check the res first. The most recent laptop I got was pretty good, except it's limited to 1280x800 - which SUCKS.

    After that, my only other suggestion is to drop the $250 for a 1TB drive post purchase, and also get whatever extended battery they sell.

    But those are like generic tips, so...

    Modelwise I've always liked HP, but they seem to have screen issues on some models.

    I like Dell's if we're talking slightly higher end, but for the low-end I've not been very impressed lately.

    Otherwise, I would really have to suggest you consider an Apple. There's almost no reason not to get an Apple nowadays, except you asked for recommendations, and my preference is for HP. ;-)



  • @drachenstern said:

    Whatever you do, no matter what, check the res first. The most recent laptop I got was pretty good, except it's limited to 1280x800 - which SUCKS.

    After that, my only other suggestion is to drop the $250 for a 1TB drive post purchase, and also get whatever extended battery they sell.

    But those are like generic tips, so...

    Modelwise I've always liked HP, but they seem to have screen issues on some models.

    I like Dell's if we're talking slightly higher end, but for the low-end I've not been very impressed lately.

    Otherwise, I would really have to suggest you consider an Apple. There's almost no reason not to get an Apple nowadays, except you asked for recommendations, and my preference is for HP. ;-)

    Thanks for the input but unfortunately I would have to disagree with you on HP and Apple part. Where I work we offer a PC repair service, HP hits the top as the most problematic brand that we see here. Most of the problems stem from poor case design, and cheap unreliable components. On the Apple side of things to purchase an apple for the same specifications as the one i have linked would cost me almost twice the price (€1130 for the apple versus €640 for the MSI laptop).

     

    As regards your objection to the resolution of 1280 x 800, that is my main worry as I'm not used to such a low resolution.Guess I'll have to keep my options open.



  • @Hitsuji said:

    As regards your objection to the resolution of 1280 x 800, that is my main worry as I'm not used to such a low resolution.Guess I'll have to keep my options open.
    You mention resolution.  My latest work machine has 1440x900.  (One of my work machines has 1920x1200 but I never keep it that high and I would never recommend that machine).  I dunno what you're used to, but it's plenty of resolution for me.  Lenovo thinkpad T61.  Dunno how much memory it comes with, but it has 3 GB in it right now.  160 GB (or so) HD.  The prices aren't too much higher than what you've specced out there.  Only problem I've had with it is the scroll function of the touchpad sometimes goes wonky and I end up at the bottom of the page when I'm not even touching the touchpad, or I happen to be hitting CTRL at the time and I end up with HUGE or tiny text.  It works great with using my TV as a second screen at 1280x768.  Some laptops have a very limited set of resolutions that they can display on a TV because they're set up for monitors only, and no amount of fiddling with powerstrip can make them display the right res on the TV.  



  • @belgariontheking said:

    @Hitsuji said:
    As regards your objection to the resolution of 1280 x 800, that is my main worry as I'm not used to such a low resolution.Guess I'll have to keep my options open.
    You mention resolution.  My latest work machine has 1440x900. 
     

    800px high is really fucking low.

     

    1600*1200 at work is very comfortable, and my home res of 1360*1024 gives just that edge over 1280*[1024|960].



  • @Hitsuji said:

    @drachenstern said:

    Whatever you do, no matter what, check the res first. The most recent laptop I got was pretty good, except it's limited to 1280x800 - which SUCKS.

    After that, my only other suggestion is to drop the $250 for a 1TB drive post purchase, and also get whatever extended battery they sell.

    But those are like generic tips, so...

    Modelwise I've always liked HP, but they seem to have screen issues on some models.

    I like Dell's if we're talking slightly higher end, but for the low-end I've not been very impressed lately.

    Otherwise, I would really have to suggest you consider an Apple. There's almost no reason not to get an Apple nowadays, except you asked for recommendations, and my preference is for HP. ;-)

    Thanks for the input but unfortunately I would have to disagree with you on HP and Apple part. Where I work we offer a PC repair service, HP hits the top as the most problematic brand that we see here. Most of the problems stem from poor case design, and cheap unreliable components. On the Apple side of things to purchase an apple for the same specifications as the one i have linked would cost me almost twice the price (€1130 for the apple versus €640 for the MSI laptop).

     

    As regards your objection to the resolution of 1280 x 800, that is my main worry as I'm not used to such a low resolution.Guess I'll have to keep my options open.

    Get a solid state disk.  Also, 1920x1200 in a 15" laptop rocks.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    Get a solid state disk.  Also, 1920x1200 in a 15" laptop rocks.

    I wouldn't waste my money on an SSD and 1920x1200 is difficult to come by in 15" (not so difficult to find on a 17" but thats waaay to big a laptop for me).



  • @Hitsuji said:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    Get a solid state disk.  Also, 1920x1200 in a 15" laptop rocks.

    I wouldn't waste my money on an SSD and 1920x1200 is difficult to come by in 15" (not so difficult to find on a 17" but thats waaay to big a laptop for me).

    Waste?  Pah!  I suppose lower power consumption, fewer failures than mechanical drives and blazing read/write speeds aren't worth anything!



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    Waste?  Pah!  I suppose lower power consumption, fewer failures than mechanical drives and blazing read/write speeds aren't worth anything!
    They're certainly not worth 6x the price of 7200 drives.  They're worth a premium, but not that severe a premium.



  • @belgariontheking said:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    Waste?  Pah!  I suppose lower power consumption, fewer failures than mechanical drives and blazing read/write speeds aren't worth anything!
    They're certainly not worth 6x the price of 7200 drives.  They're worth a premium, but not that severe a premium.

    More like 10x per-gig.  But HDDs are so cheap that you still don't pay that much.  A good 120GB SSD could be had for $300 which is relatively expensive but still pretty cheap.  $300 extra on the cost of a new laptop is nothing.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    More like 10x per-gig.  But HDDs are so cheap that you still don't pay that much.  A good 120GB SSD could be had for $300 which is relatively expensive but still pretty cheap.  $300 extra on the cost of a new laptop is nothing.

    While yes there is a 'possible' performance increase when you use the more expensive SLC based SSD's (usually a decrese in performance from MLC based SSDs), There is nothing that I will be doing that I will see any increase in performance, except maybe when I'm booting up the laptop, so not worth paying an extra 300 smackers to loose 200GB of space. (And that drive in particular is probably a MLC based SSD).

    Oh and you'd be surprised at how much power SSD's can take, quite a lot of SSD's consume more power than standard/high-performance hard drives.

    Edit: And before you say "Sitation Needed" http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-hdd-battery,1955.html



  • @Hitsuji said:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    More like 10x per-gig.  But HDDs are so cheap that you still don't pay that much.  A good 120GB SSD could be had for $300 which is relatively expensive but still pretty cheap.  $300 extra on the cost of a new laptop is nothing.

    While yes there is a 'possible' performance increase when you use the more expensive SLC based SSD's (usually a decrese in performance from MLC based SSDs), There is nothing that I will be doing that I will see any increase in performance, except maybe when I'm booting up the laptop, so not worth paying an extra 300 smackers to loose 200GB of space. (And that drive in particular is probably a MLC based SSD).

    Oh and you'd be surprised at how much power SSD's can take, quite a lot of SSD's consume more power than standard/high-performance hard drives.

    Edit: And before you say "Sitation Needed" http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-hdd-battery,1955.html

    Where have you been for the last 13 months?  OCZ and Intel have MLC drives that kick ass now, with 200+ MB/sec sustained reads and writes.  They beat the shit out of 15k SAS.  And that Tom's Hardware article is over a year out-of-date and even has procedural flaws they admitted to (check the last paragraph).  Every benchmark I've seen since shows SSDs with great power savings over HDDs, not to mention speed, reliability, heat and noise.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    Where have you been for the last 13 months?  OCZ and Intel have MLC drives that kick ass now, with 200+ MB/sec sustained reads and writes.  They beat the shit out of 15k SAS.  And that Tom's Hardware article is over a year out-of-date and even has procedural flaws they admitted to (check the last paragraph).  Every benchmark I've seen since shows SSDs with great power savings over HDDs, not to mention speed, reliability, heat and noise.

    Fair enough I'm not familiar with those drive's so I can't comment, I would have to test their wear-leveling techniques to see for sure if they'd actually perform at the specified write speeds. But according to OCZ they still consume more power than a standard/high-performance HDD.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @belgariontheking said:
    @morbiuswilters said:
    Waste?  Pah!  I suppose lower power consumption, fewer failures than mechanical drives and blazing read/write speeds aren't worth anything!
    They're certainly not worth 6x the price of 7200 drives.  They're worth a premium, but not that severe a premium.
    More like 10x per-gig.  But HDDs are so cheap that you still don't pay that much.  A good 120GB SSD could be had for $300 which is relatively expensive but still pretty cheap.  $300 extra on the cost of a new laptop is nothing.
    HDDs are cheap because they should be.  I'm not interested in time warping back to a time when they weren't.  In my most recent build, $300 would have been the most expensive component in the machine.  Granted, that was a desktop, not a laptop.

    $300 is still $300.  It could be the difference in improvements on many other components that are worth it, like a bigger screen, better video accelerator or a vagina USB attachment.  Not all of us make $500/week like you do to afford the best in modern laptop amenities.



  • @belgariontheking said:

    Not all of us make $500/week like you do to afford the best in modern laptop amenities.
    If you're making $500/week something tells me you're not doing it right. $500 * 52 = $26000. It would be tough (although the economy is pretty shitty) for me to accept an offer of less than $1000/week, unless of course it's not a full time development position.



  • @MorallyLost said:

    @belgariontheking said:

    Not all of us make $500/week like you do to afford the best in modern laptop amenities.
    If you're making $500/week something tells me you're not doing it right. $500 * 52 = $26000. It would be tough (although the economy is pretty shitty) for me to accept an offer of less than $1000/week, unless of course it's not a full time development position.

    $1000 a week!?  Why, that's a King's Salary!  Next you'll want health insurance and a lunch break!



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    $1000 a week!?
     

    Wow.

    Cost of living is truly ridiculous there. Sure the USA isn't on the brink of hyperinflation?

    I mean, the numbers you all quote dazzle me. I turn a formidable personal profit on less than half of those yearly salaries.

    Or maybe y'all just suck at managing money and not spending frivolously.



  • @dhromed said:

    @morbiuswilters said:
    $1000 a week!?
    Wow.

    Cost of living is truly ridiculous there. Sure the USA isn't on the brink of hyperinflation?

    I mean, the numbers you all quote dazzle me. I turn a formidable personal profit on less than half of those yearly salaries.

    Or maybe y'all just suck at managing money and not spending frivolously.

    Except for the $1000 a week, all mentions and ridicules of money in this thread were ficticious.  I doubt anyone who posts on this forum makes $500/week, unless they're unemployed or in school.  $1000 a week = $52000 a year (more if $1000 is the take home), which isn't a bad salary for a programmer in his 20s in most parts of the country.  Some parts of the country (the big ones, NYC, Boston, Chicago, LA) are massively expensive and that salary wouldn't rent anything more than a closet or a backyard shed.  I've walked past condos in downtown Chicago that had an asking price of a million dollars.  In the suburbs I visited, houses were roughly half that.  



  • sheesh, I sure as hell don't make $1000 a week. Then again, I would be raising my eyebrow if I got payed in dollars. :P

    I did earn about ~675 euro a day at my previous job as software engineer (currently self-employed so I don't have a clue what i'm earning). Which google tells me comes in at 962 US$ with the current exchange rate. But that hardly compares, seeing as comparing wages between differnt countries without adjusting for PPP and lots of other stuff like social benefits or whatever.

    What is sensible however is to judge your computer buying on basis of investment. Instead of looking at how much money you have, you could better look at how much money you want to spend depending onwhen you want a new one. I think it is about average to buy a new computer about every 3 years or so. New laptop, new PC, new components for old PC and a new laptop again.That's about it for me anyway.

    So assuming I want a laptop which is priced at  4000 EUR, and I want a new one in 3 years, I would have to save 111 a month for my new computer. The hard part is of course actually doing that. Making a seperate savings account and putting the money away each month. That way buying a new computer is never a big financial investment, because you've been saving for it anyway.  Of course, reality isn't as clean as that, and sometimes I decide to wait a few months longer or simply put some extra money in or spend a bit less, but in this way it is never a big problem.

    Of course the 4000, 111 a month is just my specific case, it is easy to play a bit with the time or the value you want to get a more suitable result for yourself.


  • Garbage Person

     I'm not aware of any American EVER (aside from people still in school) who has ever "saved up for" anything short of a car or house. However, it's worth noting that a $4000EUR laptop is $5700US and UTTERLY NONEXISTANT - so I assume it'd come down to a pricing differential thing where you guys are getting massively ripped the fuck off and paying easily 3 times what we do. $2500 buys you a top of the line macbook pro - which is absolutely as expensive as it gets without going to retarded specialty companies.

     A new desktop computer for someone skilled enough to DIY is going to cost well under $1000 (unless they're also extremely stupid), if not, and they buy commercial, $2500 is absolutely the worst damage you can do financially without being retarded.

     So what we've learned here is that things in the EU are 2-3 times more expensive as they are here, and you make between half and roughly the same money... And you aren't complaining. Perhaps houses are damn cheaper to make up the difference - I know for a fact you don't make it up on cars.



  • @Weng said:

    However, it's worth noting that a $4000EUR laptop is $5700US and UTTERLY NONEXISTANT - so I assume it'd come down to a pricing differential thing where you guys are getting massively ripped the fuck off and paying easily 3 times what we do
     

    www.alienware.com

    I am currently saving up for it ....



  • @Nelle said:

    @Weng said:

    However, it's worth noting that a $4000EUR laptop is $5700US and UTTERLY NONEXISTANT - so I assume it'd come down to a pricing differential thing where you guys are getting massively ripped the fuck off and paying easily 3 times what we do
     

    www.alienware.com

    I am currently saving up for it ....

    I popped on to alienware.com to see what kind of laptop would cost that much...

    I LOL'd by the second page.

    Paying over $1000 for a processor that costs less than $200 for the desktop equivalent.

    I LOL'd again soon after when I saw this:

    Paying over $700 for 8GB RAM is crazy.

    Well after specing up a powerful gaming machine, I quickly realised I could build a more powerful desktop system for the price of the processor alone.

    I can't see any reason for paying such an amount for a laptop that effectively will probably never be used outside of a single room. (A 17" laptop aint that mobile). I stupidly bought one before for gaming as well as ordinary work and quickly realised what a mistake I had made, especially after dealing with the heat issues of a high end laptop, which quickly cases massive problems on it's own.

    This is partially why I've primarily focused at the 12" / 13" range. Mobilty/Battery life are the primary things I look for, If I want to game I have a desktop for that.



  • @Weng said:

    I'm not aware of any American EVER (aside from people still in school) who has ever "saved up for" anything short of a car or house.

    Well I wasn't pretending that it was a popular thing to do. But I like to buy expensive shit often. So I tend to save up for it.

    However, it's worth noting that a $4000EUR laptop is $5700US and UTTERLY NONEXISTANT - so I assume it'd come down to a pricing differential thing where you guys are getting massively ripped the fuck off and paying easily 3 times what we do. $2500 buys you a top of the line macbook pro - which is absolutely as expensive as it gets without going to retarded specialty companies.

    A new desktop computer for someone skilled enough to DIY is going to cost well under $1000 (unless they're also extremely stupid), if not, and they buy commercial, $2500 is absolutely the worst damage you can do financially without being retarded.

    So what we've learned here is that things in the EU are 2-3 times more expensive as they are here, and you make between half and roughly the same money... And you aren't complaining. Perhaps houses are damn cheaper to make up the difference - I know for a fact you don't make it up on cars.

    *cough*, it's not a euro dollar. it's just a euro. 

    Also just for a test I went to the apple website and configured a macbook pro 17" for myself. 3Ghz Core2duo, 8GB ram, 500GB disk 7.2k rpm  + some cables and stuff (mini to DVI, apple remote)  final price € 3.591,0, which includes tax. But yes, I am reasonably sure we are getting the shaft at the moment. But don't forget that that is because of the current exchange rate, If the dollar rises above the euo the tables turn. 

    With computers I tend to buy them fully rigged, but not branded or anything, and will happily upgrade harddisk space or memory when the time comes. But with laptops I just buy the one I think is best. I am more then sure there are people who think it is a overpriced laptop, but I'm done lugging around half a ton of plastic from dell, and sony vaio isn't much cheaper anyway. Besides I kind of like OSX.

    Also please note that the EU isn't a country and blanked statements like you made are just plainly not true. What is true is that some global product brands will price their items at something and just replace the currency icon per country.

    But anyway, like I said about the salary stuff, it's useless to compare stuff on these terms. Yes it costs more and in this case it is probably more expensive, but that doesn't always have to be that way. Because your basically comparing apples with apple like oranges.If you where to compare the worth of the laptop in terms of financial strain you would have to factor in a lot of things. Because what I pay more in electronics I might save on groceries or indeed as you point out houses. This is where PPP comes in, but I personally don't even find that very reliable.  

     

    There is actually a thread about that in the sidebar, a rather pointless flamewar between morb and MPS(?) against basically everyone not living in america about all such things and more. Personally I don't find it all that interesting, I am financially strong enough to buy just about everything I want within reason, but I find it rather annoying when people think they can make conclusions by anecdotal comment or oversimplified conclusions.




  • Garbage Person

    @stratos said:

    *cough*, it's not a euro dollar. it's just a euro. 
    Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. I went slightly retarded typing that. Too used to doing conversions to and from silly third world currencies where everyone and their dog either uses the dollar or the symbol for the dollar.

    @stratos said:

    Also please note that the EU isn't a country
    Yet. Give them time. They'll have all of you merged into one within the next 30 years (with the possible exception of the UK - which will have gone the rest of the way 1984 by then and frequently be at war with you).



  • @stratos said:

    I did earn about ~675 euro a day at my previous job as software engineer (currently self-employed so I don't have a clue what i'm earning). Which google tells me comes in at 962 US$ with the current exchange rate. But that hardly compares, seeing as comparing wages between differnt countries without adjusting for PPP and lots of other stuff like social benefits or whatever.

    Was that 675EUR pre-tax?   Even then, that's $240k/year which is pretty damn rare in the US (not to mention Europe where earnings are lower) for software engineering.  Did you have job-related expenses that had to be paid for?



  • @dhromed said:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    $1000 a week!?
     

    Wow.

    Cost of living is truly ridiculous there. Sure the USA isn't on the brink of hyperinflation?

    I mean, the numbers you all quote dazzle me. I turn a formidable personal profit on less than half of those yearly salaries.

    Or maybe y'all just suck at managing money and not spending frivolously.

    Cost of living depends on location.  Most places you can get a nice place for $1000/month in rent or mortgage.  In Manhattan you can't get a roach-infested hellhole for $1k.  Also remember that the US has a far more active and free economy than the EU which results in more wealth creation and higher salaries.  Being the world's #1 economy does mean lots of wealth, ya know.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @stratos said:

    I did earn about ~675 euro a day at my previous job as software engineer (currently self-employed so I don't have a clue what i'm earning). Which google tells me comes in at 962 US$ with the current exchange rate. But that hardly compares, seeing as comparing wages between differnt countries without adjusting for PPP and lots of other stuff like social benefits or whatever.

    Was that 675EUR pre-tax?   Even then, that's $240k/year which is pretty damn rare in the US (not to mention Europe where earnings are lower) for software engineering.  Did you have job-related expenses that had to be paid for?

     

    Extreemly stupid mistake on my part i'm afraid.  That's 675 a week. That's pre-tax. So when I take off all our EU socialist state tax it's 473 EUR. On yearly basis I earned 32K pre-tax. Which as far as I know is about normal for people my age and in my field.  So sorry, but I'm afraid I am not exceptional, 



  • @stratos said:

    Extreemly stupid mistake on my part i'm afraid.  That's 675 a week. That's pre-tax. So when I take off all our EU socialist state tax it's 473 EUR. On yearly basis I earned 32K pre-tax. Which as far as I know is about normal for people my age and in my field.  So sorry, but I'm afraid I am not exceptional, 

    Ahh.  I was about to say, damn.  Is that 473EUR completely what you take home?  Because your tax rate is only 30% then.  Of course, you also have VATs or what-have-you, but 30% is almost what some people here pay in Federal income tax alone.  Then there's 15.3% for Social Security and FICA, and also state (and sometimes city!) income taxes (5% for me, but going up to 6.5% soon, I believe).  All told, my "non-socialist" tax burden is around 50% and that's not including sales taxes, property taxes, corporate taxes (which I pay for in the form of more expensive goods and services), estate taxes, gas taxes, "meal" taxes, liquor taxes, cigarette taxes.  There are plenty of others and I haven't even started in on the taxes on health benefits Obama wants to enact.  All told, I pay at least 65% of my income in taxes.  It doesn't even take into consideration the harm taxes do to the economy in the form of higher goods and services and the fact the rich in the US are taxed so much that they have less to invest in business development and less to pay employees.

     

    So, yeah, fuck you.



  • Well to be honest this whole weekly thing is a bit annoying since I get paid per month. But on monthly basis from my base salary the following things get deducted.41 euro for lunch at work, then 6.9% social healthcare and ~30% for salary tax (sort of akin to income tax)

    If I earn more I will also have to pay more salary tax, if I for instance started making more then 50K EUR a year it becomes 50% salary tax while if I would make less then 17K a year I would probably pay less, but i'm unsure how much.

    There are also quite a few taxes I have to pay outside of the payment slip, like almost a 1000 EURO a year for garbage disposal tax and keeping-the-dykes-up tax, not even to mention our VAT is at 19% for non-essential things (food, drinks and for some reason books are at 6%). Also about the cigarette taxes, i'm unsure how much it is on your side of the pond, but here it is currently 100% excise tax. So for a pack of 22 cigarettes I pay 5 euro. Alcohol also has a excise, but it is fairly small as far as I know. You of course had that whole prohibition business which will probably have had it's effects on excise on such things. 

    But don't worry, people complain a lot here about all those costs, ironically even pointing to america where everything would be cheaper and less taxed. Apparently that is not completely true then.




  • In Finland:

    City tax: 16-21%
    Church tax (if you haven't left): 1-2%
    Medical care tax: 1.28%
    Income tax: Depends on income (0% unitl 13 099 €/year. 36 000 €/year would be around 9%)
    Employee pension: 4.3%
    Unemployment insurance : 0.2%
    So total around 32.78%. There is quite a bit of deductions that normal employee tends to get. Probably the most important would be mortage intrest deducation (you can deduce your mortage's intrest from your capital income tax and if you don't have enough capital income to get it at 0, you multiply the rest by 28% (or 30% if it's your first house during the first 10 years) and deduce it from your income tax). Second most important would be commute deducation (a bit too comlex to bother explaining, but I guess about 10% of all employees get the full 7000 €)
    Capital tax (income from dividends etc. You don't need to pay any additional taxes for them, but I think the company might need to pay some additional taxes): 28%
    VAT: Services 22%, groceries 17%
    Alcohol: Depends, but for beer (4.5% alcohol) it would be ~90% (beer litre is around 2.06 € when including VAT)
    Cigarettes: 0.15 €+50% of the price (1 costs around 0.225 €)
    Gas: ~0.54 € (one litre of gas is ~1.33 €)
    Diesel: ~0.31 € (one litre of diesel is ~1 €. There is an additional yearly diesel tax as well)

    I guess that's about all of the "direct" taxes that normal consumer suffers. Of course, there is shitloads of business related taxes as well.

    Sucks? Yep



  • @stratos said:

    If I earn more I will also have to pay more salary tax, if I for instance started making more then 50K EUR a year it becomes 50% salary tax...

    Ouch.

     

    @stratos said:

    Also about the cigarette taxes, i'm unsure how much it is on your side of the pond, but here it is currently 100% excise tax. So for a pack of 22 cigarettes I pay 5 euro.

    They're quite high here.  A pack of 20 cigarettes is about $8 right now in my state.  Without any taxes, though, that would be less than $1.  Tobacco is cheap here because we don't have to import it but it has become quite fashionable in recent years for politicians to tax cigarettes as a way to raise revenues and discourage "unhealthy behavior".

     

    @stratos said:

    Alcohol also has a excise, but it is fairly small as far as I know. You of course had that whole prohibition business which will probably have had it's effects on excise on such things.

    Alcohol is pretty heavily taxed here as well.  A 6-pack of 12 oz (355mL) bottles of mid-level beer runs around $10 here.  It would be somewhere closer to $2 without the alcohol-specific taxes, but I don't know exactly how much.



  • @Hitsuji said:

    Paying over $700 for 8GB RAM is crazy.
    Yeah.  I had to train a coworker recently not to take any of Dell's (desktop machine) upgrades seriously.  $100 for an extra 200GB of HD Space?  $100 can buy you 1TB.  Just make sure you have enough SATA slots and RAM slots for upgrades.  He ended up with a machine similar to what I could have built for him for only a hundred dollars or so more.  

    Look at it this way, instead of the "over $700" way.  It's $700 for 4GB of RAM, since 4GB is included.  That's fucking ridiculous.  I don't care if the RAM gives me blowjobs, I'm not paying that much for RAM.  4GB of Desktop RAM at 1066 should run around $50-$100 at the very most.  Laptop RAM shouldn't be 7-14x that.  



  • @belgariontheking said:

    @Hitsuji said:

    Paying over $700 for 8GB RAM is crazy.
    Yeah.  I had to train a coworker recently not to take any of Dell's (desktop machine) upgrades seriously.  $100 for an extra 200GB of HD Space?  $100 can buy you 1TB.  Just make sure you have enough SATA slots and RAM slots for upgrades.  He ended up with a machine similar to what I could have built for him for only a hundred dollars or so more.  

    Look at it this way, instead of the "over $700" way.  It's $700 for 4GB of RAM, since 4GB is included.  That's fucking ridiculous.  I don't care if the RAM gives me blowjobs, I'm not paying that much for RAM.  4GB of Desktop RAM at 1066 should run around $50-$100 at the very most.  Laptop RAM shouldn't be 7-14x that.  

     

    I so totally agree with you on that, just to hammer the point down even more, in the mac store, 4GB extra of laptop memory (DDR3 1066 2x4GB) is +900 euro. ($ 1282). Short search on a dutch pricewatch website tells me Kingston KTA-MB1066K2/4G  2x4GB (SODIMM (laptop memory)) is priced on average at 75 euro.That's 825 euro "apple tax". Adding memory in a macbook is about 5 minutes work.

    Also in my previous mac the memory apple put in was your basic no-brand taiwanese type, while kingston (at least in my perception) is a A-brand. Now I don't really care about brands with memory, but still. Fucking 825 euro. It's pure and utter theft. Sadly however, I guess it does work for them. I can sort of understand it, people are already willing to pay for their mac, and pressing one button to get that memory is very easy.

     



  • @Weng said:

    A new desktop computer for someone skilled enough to DIY is going to cost well under $1000 (unless they're also extremely stupid)
     

    That's what mine cost; and I DIM'd, so computer parts are roughly the same price, I suppose.

    @Weng said:

     So what we've learned here is that things in the EU are 2-3 times more expensive as they are here

    I think that depends heavily on the product (-domain). Gas: way more expensive in EU, but not in all countries. Tech components: roughly the same. Food: I don't know.

    @Weng said:

    Give them time. They'll have all of you merged into one within the next 30 years

     Hah! Hardly. The EU are like a band of friends who like doing lots of stuff and drinking beer together but don't want to even consider living in the same house.



  • @dhromed said:

    @Weng said:

    Give them time. They'll have all of you merged into one within the next 30 years

     Hah! Hardly. The EU are like a band of friends who like doing lots of stuff and drinking beer together but don't want to even consider living in the same house.

    What a nightmare that would be.  France would never bathe, England would insist on paying its part of the rent with a currency no one else uses and the Netherlands would move their furniture to the bottom of the pool after shoring up a dry spot with dirt left over from the tulip garden.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @dhromed said:
    @Weng said:
    Give them time. They'll have all of you merged into one within the next 30 years
    Hah! Hardly. The EU are like a band of friends who like doing lots of stuff and drinking beer together but don't want to even consider living in the same house.
    What a nightmare that would be.  France would never bathe, England would insist on paying its part of the rent with a currency no one else uses and the Netherlands would move their furniture to the bottom of the pool after shoring up a dry spot with dirt left over from the tulip garden.
    The Germans would constantly scream about beer purity and how it's still relevant while the brits and irish try to get a full fledged soccer game going in the middle of the party.  The Belgians are already drunk by the beginning of the party but quickly slow down because their beer is so thick.  The French sit in the corner drinking wine and eating cheese and talking about how much hair they've got on their nipples.



  •  These observations are all utterly correct.



  • @stratos said:

    If I earn more I will also have to pay more salary tax, if I for instance started making more then 50K EUR a year it becomes 50% salary tax while if I would make less then 17K a year I would probably pay less, but i'm unsure how much.
     

    In most (if not all) progressive tax systems, you only incur the higher tax percentage on the amount of money over the threshold. Your base tax rate doesn't change.

    Example: 

    Base tax rate - 20%. Upper Income (50,000+) - 50%

    If you make 50,000 you get taxed 20% of that, which turns out to  10,000, leaving you wisht 40,000

    If you make  52,000 you get taxed 20% of the first 50,000 (again, 10,000) and then 50% on the remaining 2,000 (1,000) for a total tax of 11,000, leaving you wish 41,000. You are NOT going to pay 50% on the whole thing (26,000) and end up in the poor house.

    Moving up in tax bracket should never equate to a loss of take-home income. 

     



  • FINALLY there's a 1 TB SSD that costs only 2x what your computer should cost.

    For those keeping track at home, this is  11-33x what a desktop 1TB HD should cost.

    This has nothing to do with the discussion.  I just thought I would post it.


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