I'm not going to tell you what to buy, and I'm not going to tell you how to buy it.  But I am going to tell you where most people make some very bad decisions about computer purchases.

Recently I was in the Market for a laptop.  My son is now 5 years old and he tends to be on the computer a fair bit.  My wife who had little experience with computers before I met her really enjoys her time on the computer now.  It was starting to become a bit of a conflict between them.  So I decided a laptop would probably be the best solution to the problem.

Now this is where many people go wrong.  They think they are going to use the computer for so much more than they really will.  I almost got caught in that trap.  The following is our situation.

I really wanted to buy a Dell Mini 9 and hack it to run OS X.  Now I had decided some time ago that the next computer I bought was going to run OS X.  Now the reason for this is 2 fold.

1.  I use OS X for work and it has a lot going for it.
2.  I bought a car with a manual transmission for my wife early in our relationship for the same reason we purchased a laptop with OS X.  I wanted her to know how to drive it.

So with that in mind I started looking at the Dell Mini 9.  It's quite an impressive little netbook, decent processor, RAM, and so on.  I thought "this is perfect" I can hack a copy of OS X on it and then she will have a perfect little machine for her purposes.

Then I started to think about reality.  Well what is she going to do with this computer?  Well I thought, surf the Internet and practice her hobby of writing.  Well is the Mini 9 the best computer for this purpose?

After a lot of thought on the matter I decided that the Mini 9 had one major problem.  It's Size.  Why is this a problem? Netbooks are so small and portable, they are perfect.  Well that might be true for a student who needs to pack a computer around with them to class to take notes, but for our purposes, the typing on the laptop would have been too difficult.  The keyboard and screensize on a more full featured computer would definetly suit us beter.

And this is where beleive so many people go wrong with their computer purchases.  They are looking too much and the great next technology and little on how they are going to use the computer.  My father purchased a $400 compaq laptop a couple years ago and it's still perfect to his needs, all he has ever done is read his email and use ebay.ca.  Simple needs simple computer.

I have seen far too many people purchase the fastest video card and only play WoW.  I've seen people purchase a quad core desktop and never encode a video.  I've seen people with 1 TB harddrives and only surf the Internet.  Well, before you make your next decision to purchase your next computer take a minute to think about what are you really going to use it for.

A side note on our purchase.  I did end up purchasing a Macbook Air for my wife.  Now everyone calls them overpriced and under powered, which I would agree with.  But I ended up purchasing a refurbished last generation one from the Apple Store Canada for 1099.99 and it was in incredible shape.  Not one scratch, and hasn't had a hiccup since we first started it up.

My wife finds it easy to type on, long battery life and generally a great computer.  For her purposes it more than fits her needs. Perhaps I bought above her needs, but I would prefer a reliable machine over dealing with second rate technical support.  And the lack of ports on the machine is only a bonus, becuase she would never use them anyway.

Why purchase something just becuase you might use it.  Purchase based on your real needs.