I bought an iMac in 2012 for £860 (student discount, original price £1000) and sold it one and a half years later for £600.

I also bought a 13" Sony Vaio S for around £1200 in 2011 and had to sell it 6 months later, because it was a total piece of shit. I got £650 for it.

So I'd argue that buying cheap plastic crap is in fact the non-budget option.

That's how it always is. See the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-ri...

It's frustrating to see Sony fail like that - Sony was Apple back when Apple was doomed. I keep waiting for a Win32/Android company to position themselves as "Apple without the Apple OS". Sony has succeeded there with the Xperia line, but their laptops don't reflect that.

According to the former president of Sony, Apple kind of agreed: http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/02/05/steve-jobs-wanted-...