MYTH: It’s more expensive to buy from a small business.

Customers often ask us to compare the cost of our computers to computers available through national retail stores. While it’s true that national retailers have more “buying power” than small businesses, this doesn’t always equal a lower price for the customer. One of the biggest disadvantages to purchasing a “off the shelf” computer from a national retailer, is that the specifications of the computer have already been determined by the manufacturer before the computer hits the shelf. This means customers often end up paying for features or components that they don’t need. As an independent IT business, we’re able to take the time to understand exactly what our customers need from their computer and provide a customised solution to meet those requirements. As a result, our customers save money by not paying for features that they don’t need.

For example, lets imagine “Mr Joe Blogs” needs 500GB of storage to store all his photos and movies, but he will only use the computer for basic tasks like internet browsing and emails. This means he will get no benefit from a high-powered CPU, large amounts of Memory or a 3D Graphics Card.

Checking the website of a well-known nation-wide retailer as of 20/09/2019, the cheapest laptop listed online with a 500GB Solid State Drive costs $1335.
The cheapest desktop computer with a 500GB Solid State Drive is $2097. Both of these computers have Intel Core i7 processors – considerably more power than Mr Blogs will use. Mr Blogs who needs plenty of storage space but doesn’t need a high performance processor, will pay more than he needs to simply to get a computer with enough storage space.

Sure Mr Blogs could sacrifice the reliability and performance of a Solid State Drive in favor of the slower, older technology of a Hard Disk Drive to get the cost down, but why should he have to sacrifice anything?

Comparatively, Total IT has laptops available with 500GB Solid State Drives for $999 and desktops with 500GB Solid State Drives for $1199. Mr Blogs can still have the reliability and performance from a Solid State Drive without paying for features he won’t benefit from. In this scenario, Mr Blogs SAVES $336 buying from Total IT if he purchases a laptop or SAVES $898 if he purchases a Desktop.

At Total IT we have control over the specifications and features that go into the computers we sell so we can customise them to our customer’s needs. This means we’re able to provide a customised solution that actually costs less than our big competitors.