Is a laptop rental a smart move?

Sponsored Links:

Let me guess: If you’re on this site right now, you’re probably wondering about laptop rental. Why wouldn’t you? It’s cheap, it’s easy, and you don’t have to worry about the long-term care of the laptop. It’s a great tool for someone who can’t afford to go out and spend a large chunk of change on a new computer all at once. It’s also not a bad option for people who’ve had a laptop break on them, and absolutely have to have another for some reason. Businesspeople are such people; if their personal computer crashes, their companies sometimes just go out and rent one for them to use for work until repairs can be made.

The reasons to rent a laptop are plenty, but we won’t go into that with this post today. Today we’ll talk about why I don’t think laptop rental is a good idea. Yes, you heard that right. I’m going to tell you why doing such a thing can mean financial trouble for you in the long run.

Laptop rentals have a lot of costs that aren’t addressed up front by the rental agency. These costs add up throughout the life of the rental term, and in the end you come out much less ahead than you thought you would when you originally signed on the dotted line. In fact, you come out quite a large amount behind. This is due to a simple rule of life: interest. Yes, our friend interest strikes again. As the saying goes: “There are two things in life that are for certain: death and taxes.” I propose we make it three: “Death, taxes, and interest.”

Why does the interest on your laptop rental add up so quickly? It’s simple, really. The interest rates on rentals are absolutely massive, and aren’t usually brought to your attention unless you’re reading the small print (you are, aren’t you?). You’re just quoted a monthly rate and a rental term (the length, basically). It’s not like car shopping where you’ll negotiate. If the monthly rate sounds good to you, you sign. They’ll never tell you what the interest rate is.

Well, I’m here to tell you this: The interest rate you’ll see on a typical laptop rental is upwards of 100%. You heard that right: 100%. For every month you rent a laptop, you pay just as much interest as you pay principle, and that, my friends, is ridiculous and downright criminal. That rental agency is lining their pockets because you’re not reading the fine print.

Just remember this post the next time you get the idea to do something silly like think you can beat the system on a cheap laptop rental.

Related posts:

  1. Go easy: Rent a laptop
  2. Thinking About Renting A Laptop?
  3. Know Your Pink Notebooks And Laptops
  4. What are refurbished laptops, anyway?
  5. What’s your favorite picture printer?

Filed Under Laptop Rental | 1 Comment

Tagged With , , , ,

Comments

One Response to “Is a laptop rental a smart move?”

  1. Rent A Laptop on November 13th, 2009 1:27 pm

    [...] long run than if you had bought the laptop outright. I spoke about this in my previous post about laptop rental a while back as well. You’re not doing yourself any favors by going to the big companies, let [...]

Leave a Reply