Save money or you get what you pay for?
 

Do you most often try to save money buying less expensive things, or get the somewhat more expensive one that may well be better, knowing that "you get what you pay for" is often true?

Imagine your office network just broke and it needs a new PCIe bus multiplexer in order to get your office back up. You can buy the $129 PCIe bus multiplexer or the $169 one. You don't know anything about this part, because I just made it up, so you have to base your decision completely on price. You can't research it online because your network is down until you buy the part. Do you get the $169 one because it's likely better, or save $40 buying the less expensive one?

Obviously there are all kinds of factors that come into play with real purchase decisions, but I'm interested in how just price and it's affect on likely quality affects the decision.

Can I pick option 3? I keep spares of important stuff.

I spend the money and get the better one OR I buy 2 of the cheaper on in case one of them breaks.

When it comes to business I dont cheap out (usually) and I love having "back ups"