Keep Above
Laptop or desktop
A laptop and a desktop can do the same work at different prices, with different lifespans and different costs along the way. Each side here takes its purchase price, its yearly running costs, and how long one would last before being replaced — counted over the same years, with every replacement bought again at the price you entered. Both land on a cost per year; no winner is declared.
Not counted while this is $0
Not counted while this is $0
Put in what each one would cost to buy and to run. Nothing here is read from your budgets, and nothing is saved.
| Option A | Option B | |
|---|---|---|
| Paid up front (one unit) | — | — |
| Times it would be bought | — | — |
| Buying, all-up | — | — |
| Running, all-up | — | — |
| Total over 10 years | — | — |
| Cost a year | — | — |
Does portability show up anywhere in these figures?
It does not appear anywhere in the arithmetic above, and that is the honest limit of this page. A laptop can be carried and a desktop cannot, and no arrangement of these boxes turns that into money. The figures answer the narrower question — what each would cost over the years you set — and the wider one stays yours.
The prices also tend not to cover the same ground: a laptop's figure already includes a screen and a keyboard, where a desktop's may be the tower on its own. A battery is the other asymmetry, because it wears where a desktop has nothing equivalent, so if one would be replaced partway through, that cost spread over the machine's years belongs in the running-costs box.
This is one of the tools built into Keep Above
Keep Above is a budgeting app where you enter your bills and income and it works out the balance you need to keep — so you can see what's safe to spend. No bank connection, no ads on your data.
Which one costs less depends on how long it is kept, so the honest horizon is years — which budgeting apps forecast your balance, and how far ahead.
About this calculator
What goes into running costs a year here?
Whatever the two sides would genuinely differ on per year — a battery replacement partway through a laptop's life spread over its years, out-of-warranty repairs you'd expect, peripherals one side needs and the other has built in. Costs the two sides share can sit at $0 on both, and the comparison rests on price and lifespan.
Why are replacements counted?
Because a cheap thing that lasts 3 years inside a 10-year window is bought 4 times, and that is usually the whole story. Every replacement is counted at the price you entered, as a step in the cumulative total — only the first unit is money paid today.
What is the crossing year?
The first year the two cumulative totals would cross, replacements included. It is phrased symmetrically and names no side — a position in the arithmetic, nothing more.
Where do the monitor, keyboard and mouse belong?
They belong on whichever side would actually have to buy them. A laptop arrives with a screen and a keyboard counted in its price, so a desktop figure that leaves them out is not describing the same working setup — adding them to its purchase price puts the two on the same footing. Where the same screen would be used either way it belongs on neither side, because a cost both sides carry moves both totals by the same amount and changes nothing between them.