The first time I heard the term "price-performance rate" was from computer magazine when I was a teenager. It is a philosophy of maximize the use of money. Instead of buying something cheap or very expensive, we buy something good enough for daily use. As computer technology evolves quickly, the cheapest CPU may become useless soon while CPUs on the cutting edge are very expensive and the price may drop drastically within a year. Therefore, we should lay in the middle. Buying CPU with reasonable price that can be used for reasonably long period (around 2-3 years).
This philosophy deeply influenced my consuming behavior. For example, I prefer to have three good meals instead of one excellent ,romantic meal. I prefer to have three short trips instead of one long and luxury trip. Finally, I find there is something wrong. It came from a buying experience of my friend.
Two years ago, my friend wanted to buy a tablet. iPad was too expensive for him and he wanted for a price effective one. After comparing many tablets, he chose one made by a Chinese small company. There are many small companies in China which keen on copying the famous digital products and release with an amazingly low price. Looking at the specifications, the CPU, memory, resolution of display are all powerful. But when he started using it, the tablet was not as snappy as he expected. It compromised on many details and the overall quality sucked. The tablet damaged in only one year's use. Similar stories occurred in his smartphone. On the other hand, I heard another friend was still using his "expensive" iPad for 4 years with good condition.
In good old days, I knew getting 70 marks in exam was easy while getting 95 marks was far more difficult. It was not effective to exert triple effort in order to get 25 marks more.I still did it because I wanted to excel in my study life. Similarly, will I miss many wonderful scenes in my life if I concentrate too much on price-performance?
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