Purchase of NEC Lavie Laptop with Two-Installment Payment Plan

I purchased the following fairy purple laptop at my local BIC CAMERA store using a credit card with a two-installment payment plan on Monday.

NEC LAVIE SOL 13.3" Windows11 Home /intel Core i5/SSD: 256GB/16GB RAM with Office 2024 Home and Business

Despite the high price, I felt strange buying a laptop as if I were buying batteries or light bulbs.

When it comes to credit cards, the situation in Japan seems to differ from that in the United States. According to what I have heard, revolving payments are common in the United States, and credit cards are distributed to students to encourage their use. Without understanding how credit cards work, they use them as if they were a magical convenience, and as a result, they end up in debt.

On the other hand, cash-based transactions remain deeply ingrained in Japan. This is because the risk of being robbed is virtually nonexistent. Additionally, many business owners dislike credit card payments because the transaction fees can strain their profits.

Even in Japan, there are elderly people who have always been cash-oriented and have only recently started using credit cards, but they may not understand how credit cards work.  When I was working at a call center, an elderly man called and said that he wanted to change his payment method because the credit card service he had been using for payments was ending. He did not understand how credit cards worked. No matter how many times I explained to him that we had confirmed payment of our service by the credit card, he kept saying, “I haven't paid yet. Is it okay to just leave it as is?” I finally managed to get him to understand by rephrasing it as, “The credit card company is currently covering our usage fees.”

Anyway, the reason I bought a laptop was to replace my Surface Laptop 4. I wanted something more compact and lighter than a 3:2 aspect ratio model. Having become accustomed to wide screens, the 3:2 aspect ratio felt somewhat strange to me.

	NEC LAVIE SOL S1375	Microsoft Surface Laptop 4
Screen size	13.3"	13.5"
Resolution	1920 × 1200	2256 x 1504
Aspect ratio	16:10	3:2
Dimensions	11.87" x 8.27" x 0.56" 301.6 mm×210 mm×14.3 mm	12.1” x 8.8” x 0.57” (308 mm x 223 mm x 14.5 mm)
Weight	2.64 lbs (1,197 g)	2.79 lbs (1,265 g)

Due to app compatibility issues with the latest Surface models, I chose a Japanese manufacturer's laptop so that I could continue using Intel CPUs as before. I really like the Fairy Purple color.