I do not think that Amazon is the best place to shop for computer parts, laptops or full PC systems. The main reason for that is price, but there are other factors that should make you pause before you hit the “add to cart” button on the shopping site.
A new issue that has been uncovered by Neowin is that some sellers on Amazon inflate the storage of the devices that they sell. A laptop with 1.1 TB of storage? What an odd number. While it is possible that such a laptop exists, for instance one with a 128 GB solid state drive and a 1 TB platter-based drive, in this case, something different is being sold.
See, these particular sellers add a one year subscription to OneDrive to the laptop, and they add the 1 TB of cloud storage to the total of the laptop’s storage. So, instead of getting a laptop with 1.1 TB of storage, buyers get a laptop with 128 GB of storage and 1 TB of cloud storage.
This should not be a problem for users who know what OneDrive is, as physical and cloud storage is clearly separated in the title and Microsoft’s cloud service is mentioned by name. The system configuration is also displayed correctly, but it can still be problematic for users who hit the buy button too quickly or do not know the difference.
At the very least, it can be very confusing. If you open such a result on Amazon, say this HP 14″ laptop, you find the following title on Amazon:
HP 14″ Natural Silver Ultrabook Laptop, Intel 4-Core CPU, 4GB RAM, 1.1TB Storage (1TB OneDrive and 128GB SSD), HD Display, Windows 11, Microsoft 365 Web Apps
The title says 1.1 TB of storage first before the seller highlights how much of that is physical and how much is cloud-based.
This laptop comes in three configurations: the base model comes with 4 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage, the most expensive model with 16 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage. Here, the seller has not added the 1 TB to the laptop’s total.
However, when you scroll to the specs right below, you see 1.1 or 1.2 TB as the hard disk size. The “about this item” section again differentiates the storage between local and cloud storage.
Ultimately, it is a new selling strategy on Amazon that you may want to look out for, if you do buy laptops or PCs there. It is quite possible that Amazon is not the only marketplace where the strategy is used.
Good Lord, the f’n tech bros are getting worse every day.
It’s a reseller/dropshipper’s trick. “Oydisen Computer”
That laptop is bottom of the barrel. Those specs are for very old hardware.
I’m pretty sure that’s what I have sitting in the garage running windows 7.
Caveat Emptor is alive and well it seems; not that it never went away, of course. I don’t often buy from Amazon, perhaps a book or cd/dvd. Living in NYC I can get away with that. We still have stores. 😉