How Well Does A Low-End, Value-Oriented Philosophy Apply To iPad Purchases?

Over the past 19 years, my inclination has almost always been toward running low-end computer equipment — either “pre-owned” or entry-level spec., or both.

My first Mac was a used 1987 or ’88 vintage Mac Plus compact desktop that I purchased from a friend in 1992. I replaced the Plus with an end-of-line Mac LC 520 all-in-one desktop in early 1994, after that model had already been superseded by the LC 550, and shortly before the Motorola 68LC040 CPU powered LC 580 was released.

My first Apple laptop was a remaindered PowerBook 5300 base model (with a 9.5″ grayscale passive matrix display) in the fall of 1996, jut a week or two before the much-improved PowerBook 1400c debuted. The 5300 was succeeded by a base model WallStreet/PDQ PowerBook G3 Series powered by a 233 MHz CPU with 512k of L2 cache and a 12.1″ TFT display in early 1999.

One of my few brief dalliances with higher-end system hardware came in the form of a briefly used Power Mac G4 Cube in 2001 came in the form of a year-old but well-cared-for used 500MHz PowerBook G3 2000 Pismo that I swapped the Cube even for. That PowerBook actually was top-of-the-line when the original owner purchased it, but yesterday’s news when I took possession. Around that time I also picked up an unused, remaindered, UMAX S-900 desktop tower Mac clone, which was pretty much the highest-end Mac I’ve ever owned, with its 8 RAM expansion slots, 6 PCI expansion slots, bays for multiple internal drives, and easily upgradable processor. However it was near-obsolete by the time I got it for $300.

I got a brand new Mac laptop in 2003, but it was a 12″ G3 iBook — the base model. Three years later I replaced the iBook with an Apple Certified Refurbished 17″ PowerBook, which like the Pismo had been top-of-the-line when purchased new, but like the S-900 was going on obsolete when I got it — with the first Intel-powered Macs having debuted a couple of months previously.

I finally joined the MacIntel era three years later when I purchased an Apple Certified Refurbished 13″ aluminum unibody MacBook — four months before that model was replaced by the first 13″ MacBook Pro. The MacBook and the iBook were the only two Macs I’ve ever purchased while they were still current models, and both were the low end of their model range respectively.

It’s of course in large measure a matter of personal inclination. I just don’t feel compelled to surf the bleeding edge in hardware — something that one can only do for elusive and fleeting intervals anyway unless there is unlimited cash available. My orientation is the obverse — I use hardware long after most other folks would have given up on it. For example, I’m actually drafting this column on that same Pismo PowerBook I swapped the Cube for back in ‘2001 — still going strong well into its 11th year of service.

And of course in so doing, I’ve saved a lot of money that I might’ve otherwise spent chasing the latest and greatest. Another advantage of buying older-model computers is that you’re less likely to be bitten by early production glitches and gremlins, and reap the reliability and stability advantages of using relatively mature technology.

One also avoids becoming a de facto late beta tester and paying for the privilege. Occasionally, a new hardware design works flawlessly from the get-go –– the original MacBook Air and the iPad 1 being recent examples — at least those two products had no major teething problems. Nevertheless, I suspect that with almost any product as complex as a computer, are lessons are learned in the early production stages that result in quietly addressed and implemented unannounced running changes.

One also usually has to wait a few months at best for a new model system to filter down into the Certified Refurbished channel, my preferred purchase option. Based on both reputation and empirical experience, I’m convinced that buying Apple Certified Refurbished hardware is usually your best value if you prefer not to buy used. The two ACR Macs I’ve owned, plus a couple of ACR iPods, have all been trouble–free performers and indistinguishable from you in appearance, except for Brown box packaging and discounted prices, and have carried the same, happily-unneeded 12 month warranty as a new Mac, with the same AppleCare 3-year extended warranty.

Buying used or refurbished, you can usually afford to get a higher–spec machine than you otherwise would have, often for a cheaper price than a less well-equipped and featured new model.

The contemporaneous point to this reverie is that having finally determined that I do want a tablet computer, I’ve been trying to decide whether I should go my traditional route and pick up a remaindered or Certified Refurbished iPad 1, or go with an iPad 2.

Currently, the Apple Canada online store lists certified refurbished 32 GB first-generation iPads for CAN$449.00, while the just-released-in-this-country-on March-25 base WiFi iPad 2 is listed at CAN$519.00. Since that’s CAN$30 cheaper than the original iPads sold for in Canada, and I figure I could probably get along just fine with the standard 16 GB of data storage, not being much of a music or movie collector, and the new price for a machine with a dual-core processor, twice the RAM, and the rest of the new stuff makes the iPad 2 almost a no-brainer value by comparison. The catch is that availability of all iPad 2 models is quoted as 3 to 4 weeks. I don’t need completely immediate gratification, but that’s too long of a backorder for me to go with on a purchase like this. How ironic. I finally convince myself that I want a tablet, and can’t get one right away.

From a completely rational perspective, I could also probably get along just fine with the iPad 1. While I’ll no doubt discover many things I haven’t thought of that the iPad can do for me, my main interest in one is at this point for reading periodicals, keeping caught up with email, web surfing and so forth. The iPad 1 should be able to do those things quite satisfactorily, and the refurb unit’s higher data storage capacity would be no hardship. The lack of what is reportedly a pretty mediocre camera on the iPad one doesn’t trouble me greatly, and it wouldn’t be a deal-breaker. More important to me would be the iPad 1 lack of convenient HDTV display mirroring — a very cool iPad 2 feature that I probably would take advantage of.

Reportedly, Apple opted to not offer display mirroring in the iPad 1 because it didn’t have enough processor or video processing muscle to support the feature adequately, something that has been addressed with the iPad 2’s dual core A5 processor and claimed up to nine times faster video. While I can probably live without the mirroring, I suspect that as software developers optimize their apps to take advantage of the iPad 2’s greater speed, there will probably be other things that iPad 1 holdouts will be shut out of, and how well it will run iOS 5 is an imponderable at this point.

Consequently, I can envision myself second-guessing a decision to go with older hardware, in this instance with only $70 separating the two alternatives (the 32 GB iPad 2 lists for CAN$619, but as noted for my purposes the 16 GB model should be all I need). Refurb. 16 gig iPad 1’s are currently sold out.

But on the other side of the coin, I notice that rumors of a September iPad 3 release, with a Retina display are cropping up again after dying down for a while. I still think an iPad 3 release before next January or February is considerably less than likely, but who knows? Not me. But I do expect there’s a reasonable case to be made for buying an iPad 1 and then waiting for iPad 3, as opposed to buying an iPad 2 whenever they become available, then inevitably wishing one had waited for the iPad 3 whenever they debut.

I’ll let you know how it turns out.