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I haven't seen much of a change in the retail market. http://www.pricewatch.com/cpu/ I do think it is ironic that AMD is beating Intel to the market with new processors. Considering just before the K8 came out Intel made the statement to the effect "AMD has never done anything but copy our designs".

http://www.pricewatch.com/cpu/992016-1.htm vs. http://www.pricewatch.com/cpu/992208-1.htm

I haven't seen much of a change in the retail market. http://www.pricewatch.com/cpu/ I do think it is ironic that AMD is beating Intel to the market with new processors. Considering just before the K8 came out Intel made the statement to the effect "AMD has never done anything but copy our designs".

http://www.pricewatch.com/cpu/992016-1.htm vs. http://www.pricewatch.com/cpu/992208-1.htm

The only things that may possibly affect this will be the addition of 512 MB built-in flash memory

Huh? 512M of SD Memory is $15 right now.

E1505 Dual Core ($1,241)


* Duo processor T2500
* Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005
* 15.4 inch Wide Screen XGA Display with TrueLife
* FREE 1GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz (2 DIMM)
* 40GB 5400rpm SATA
* 8X CD/DVD Burner (DVD+/-RW) with double-layer DVD+R write capability
* 1390 802.11b/g Mini Card
* 256MB ATI MOBILITY RADEON X1400 HyperMemory
* Sound Blaster Audigy ADVANCED HD Audio
* 85 WHr 9-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery

2GB RAM ($173.64)


Hitachi 80GB 7200rpm ($143.38)


sell 1GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz (2 DIMM) on craigslist (-$85.96)

sell 40GB 5400rpm SATA on craigslist (-$64)

total $1408

E1505 Dual Core ($1,241)


* Duo processor T2500
* Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005
* 15.4 inch Wide Screen XGA Display with TrueLife
* FREE 1GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz (2 DIMM)
* 40GB 5400rpm SATA
* 8X CD/DVD Burner (DVD+/-RW) with double-layer DVD+R write capability
* 1390 802.11b/g Mini Card
* 256MB ATI MOBILITY RADEON X1400 HyperMemory
* Sound Blaster Audigy ADVANCED HD Audio
* 85 WHr 9-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery

2GB RAM ($173.64)


Hitachi 80GB 7200rpm ($143.38)


sell 1GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz (2 DIMM) on craigslist (-$85.96)

sell 40GB 5400rpm SATA on craigslist (-$64)

total $1408

E1505 Dual Core ($1,241) http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx ?oc=e1505s2&cs=19&dgvcode=ss&c=US&l=EN * Duo processor T2500 * Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 * 15.4 inch Wide Screen XGA Display with TrueLife * FREE 1GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz (2 DIMM) * 40GB 5400rpm SATA * 8X CD/DVD Burner (DVD+/-RW) with double-layer DVD+R write capability * 1390 802.11b/g Mini Card * 256MB ATI MOBILITY RADEON X1400 HyperMemory * Sound Blaster Audigy ADVANCED HD Audio * 85 WHr 9-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery 2GB RAM ($173.64) http://castle.pricewatch.com/s/search.asp?s=2GB+DD R2+SDRAM+533MHz Hitachi 80GB 7200rpm ($143.38) http://castle.pricewatch.com/s/search.asp?s=80GB+7 200rpm+SATA&c=Notebook+Drive&i=101 sell 1GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz (2 DIMM) on craigslist (-$85.96) sell 40GB 5400rpm SATA on craigslist (-$64) total $1408 with specs to blow the MacBook out of the water...

E1505 Dual Core ($1,241) http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx ?oc=e1505s2&cs=19&dgvcode=ss&c=US&l=EN * Duo processor T2500 * Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 * 15.4 inch Wide Screen XGA Display with TrueLife * FREE 1GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz (2 DIMM) * 40GB 5400rpm SATA * 8X CD/DVD Burner (DVD+/-RW) with double-layer DVD+R write capability * 1390 802.11b/g Mini Card * 256MB ATI MOBILITY RADEON X1400 HyperMemory * Sound Blaster Audigy ADVANCED HD Audio * 85 WHr 9-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery 2GB RAM ($173.64) http://castle.pricewatch.com/s/search.asp?s=2GB+DD R2+SDRAM+533MHz Hitachi 80GB 7200rpm ($143.38) http://castle.pricewatch.com/s/search.asp?s=80GB+7 200rpm+SATA&c=Notebook+Drive&i=101 sell 1GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz (2 DIMM) on craigslist (-$85.96) sell 40GB 5400rpm SATA on craigslist (-$64) total $1408 with specs to blow the MacBook out of the water...

I'm a bit confused.. when I goto Apple and select the 2.0Ghz version, I notice that the 2GB is $500 more.. but at pricewatch .. they are only $166 for 2GB... is Apple jacking up the price that much?

You know, this is a popular myth/meme/assumption that in reality is just not true.

If you go to www.pricewatch.com and search for 4GB mp3 players, you will find that the cheapest 4 gigabyte flash-based DAP (as opposed to hard drive DAP) is the iPod nano.

I picked the iPod nano example because it's the most obvious and blatant one, but if you actually research other categories of DAPs, you will often find that the iPod is cheaper purely in hardware terms.

The iPod is cheaper for the simple reason that it has economies of scale that no other mp3 player manufacturer can match. That's why even Apple haters like me have climbed aboard the iPod bandwagon (although I use Rockbox on my iPod instead of the default Apple firmware, since Rockbox has many features that the standard Apple firmware lacks).

Maybe the 60 gigger has some home media center features? It would make sense.

Maybe the 60 gigger has some home media center features? It would make sense.

Yep, be sure not to spend $300 on any other components such as:
A pentium-d 840 ($350): http://www.pricewatch.com/cpu/395410-1.htm
An athlon x2 4400 ($450): http://www.pricewatch.com/cpu/318273-1.htm
A 500gb hard drive ($275): http://www.pricewatch.com/hard_drives/284422-1.htm

Yep, be sure not to spend $300 on any other components such as:
A pentium-d 840 ($350): http://www.pricewatch.com/cpu/395410-1.htm
An athlon x2 4400 ($450): http://www.pricewatch.com/cpu/318273-1.htm
A 500gb hard drive ($275): http://www.pricewatch.com/hard_drives/284422-1.htm

Yep, be sure not to spend $300 on any other components such as:
A pentium-d 840 ($350): http://www.pricewatch.com/cpu/395410-1.htm
An athlon x2 4400 ($450): http://www.pricewatch.com/cpu/318273-1.htm
A 500gb hard drive ($275): http://www.pricewatch.com/hard_drives/284422-1.htm

I'm sorry but 5k for a little chip that makes my opteron a little faster? I could just buy another opteron for that price: http://www.pricewatch.com/cpu/419325-1.htm> The price is supposed to drop to 3k next year.

You're quite right that these are not for you - their to run highly specialised calculations (the oil & gas industries are mentioned in TFA).

They make some operations much faster (think of a hardware mpeg decoder, useless for most things, but much more efficient for the single thing it can do then a general purpose CPU)

How does this affect cooling?

These things consume 10-20 watts compared to an Opeteron's 80, so it's affect on cooling is minimal (far less then adding the second opteron that you propose)

Errr, no, try again.

'Bout $20 on pricewatch for a gen-you-wine cable lugging, external power supply having, real, modem.

Well I don't know, but it seems plausible to me that in something the size of a PDA or phone, the size difference between CF and SD would be significant.

IIRC CF is faster, and at least as big, and maybe cheaper per MB though I'm not sure about that one.

... as they have a section for No-OS systems. http://www.pricewatch.com/m-335.htm

I build all my own machines from scratch, but what about laptop and notebooks? I've never seen a laptop or notebook that could be purchased without a Microsoft operating system pre-installed.

I shouldn't have to pay for something I am not going to use. :/ Anyone know of a place that sells laptops without an OS?

All DVI outputs are indeed the same. DVI cards, of course, are not the same because they have different GPUs, amounts of memory, speeds, etc. But the DVI part will be the same. Seriously. I'm not kidding.

Hmm... then what's the difference between DVI-D, DVI-A, and DVI-I?

It would not work because such a card does not exist.

Sure it does. First listing on Pricewatch in the DVI video card category. http://www.pricewatch.com/prc.aspx?i=37&a=261544

And so you're saying that this is just as good as any other DVI card?

I've used off-brand computer parts/equipment where it makes sense to do so, and have never had a problem. My Actiontec wireless access point is four years old and has always worked great with all brands of wireless NICs. I've used Hawking switches and hubs. StarTech is great for network cards, add-on port cards.

What you have to watch out for is the online retailers. Pay attention to the customer ratings.

In a nutshell, in my experience it matters less what brand of equipment you buy, and more who you buy it from.

pricewatch.com Says the slowest Sempron being produced is the 2200+ and you can have it delivered for $57. For $60 you can get a 2.2Ghz Celeron which is no match for AMD's processor. The 2.2Ghz P4 costs $79 delivered, $22 more than the AMD offering.

The reason all those AMD chips appeared before Christmas was because they are so competitive at the lower end. When you match that with their server options AMD are wiping the floor with Intel at almost every level.

This has been my question. Why not do these things like the old memory cards for the Apple //e et al systems?

You have a controller that decides which bank of memory to store the information. There are several banks of memory, the controller makes it all look like one continuous amount of memory. I just looked at PriceWatch for USB flash memory units and they show a 1GB at $55.00 and a 512MB at $30.00.

So ten 512MB = 5.12GB at $300.00, but if these were manufactured like this I would think the cost would drop to around $150.00 or maybe $200.00 for the unit.

Or ten 1GB = 10GB at $550.00 (or maybe $300.00 - $400.00).

I would think that whatever type of controller they are already using should be expandable to handle the larger sizes.

I'm also wondering about the heat problem. Does anyone know if the larger sized drives have a heat problem? Are any of them using micro fans or something like that? Can you post if you know of anything along these lines? TIA!

because Intel Macs are cheaper than what I can piece together in PC x86 form

No way. For the price of an Intel Mac I can still build two very nice Intel x86 machines from scratch.

Ever heard of pricewatch.com?

Actually, all you need is a CompactFlash device and one of these:
http://www.mini-box.com/s.nl/sc.8/category.14/it.A /id.243/.f

Pricewatch lists 4Gb Compact Flash cards already, and that top end is likely to rise quickly.

Although I use Pricewatch all the time, I am not sure why it does not have the popularity that pricegrabber got.

It's because Pricewatch sucks. Their menu sucks, their search sucks, their display sucks, their categorization sucks, and their filtering sucks.

Have you ever tried Pricegrabber? It has a very intuitive interface and search as well as a good layout for finding either an exact product, or browsing a category trying to decide what you want.

Let's compare a search, something common and easy like 'WRT54G'. Pricewatch vs. Pricegrabber.

Both display a list of matches, but with the model I'm looking for at the top in PG and not in PW. Not a big deal. The real nice part of PG is the way you can do a filter based on a search or category. That sidebar on the left lets you do a ton of filtering to get exactly what you want. Don't see much like that on PW.

PW gives each seller an individual entry in the results. Talk about a pain in the butt. With PG it's sorted by product so I can click a product and see all the sellers for it, as well as their prices before and after shipping. There are user and commercial reviews and ratings as well as detailed specs, more features missing on PW.

There's other issues, but I don't want to write a book. The fact of the matter is that Pricegrabber is significantly better resource than Pricewatch. This acquisition may change that, but until it does I will continue to use Pricegrabber because it is simply superior. Don't take my word for it, go look for yourself.

This is how Pricewatch differentiates itself from Froogle. Froogle gets its ads from everyone and everywhere, with little or no restrictions on who lists what. Pricewatch has a pretty stringent set of rules:

(from the link)

• be at least 1 year in business
• accept phone orders
• offer phone tech support
• have established website with prices posted
• accept major credit cards
• No Auction firms or related business models such as "pooling". Fixed retail pricing please
• No Dealers that charge membership fees please

I started using Pricewatch several years ago. I enjoyed a short stint with Froogle because of its better search capabilities, but I'm back to be a Pricewatch junkie for life. Long live Pricewatch!

Is there really something better and more important to write about than pricewatch? Speaking of which, how the hell do they make money?

The two I trust:

PriceWatch.com

ResellerRatings.com

Just checked newegg and the cheapest drive out there is $44.

Exactly. And I can get a Western Digital 80GB SATA from MWAVE for $55. Someone else pointed out a $41 drive from TigerDirect. The point is that these are retail prices. Even if you assume that only the markup is removed, $51 is still rather high to be paying for a 20GB drive. In quantities of a million units or more, I'd have a hard time believing that the manufacturer wouldn't knock a few more bucks off the price. $40 I might believe. But $51? Considering the number of units we're talking, that's just insane.

My guess would be there are inherent costs involved where manufacture of the drive itself starts to dictate a minimum price.

To throw your own response back at you, "No! Really?"

I understand your point about minimum costs quite well. My only complaint is that $51 is just too darn high for a wholesale price. Especially since we've been arguing over very normal prices for drives. I haven't even pointed out places like PriceWatch, where you can get a 20GB drive for less than $40 easily. (I'll get to why I haven't in a moment.)

OTOH, this thread sounds like someone attempting to apply prices of discount consumer goods from online stores to a the products used in a manufacturing facility. I haven't worked in manufacturing in a while, but when I did I was shocked at how prices on items bought in bulk were not always cheaper than what a 'retail' discount version was.

This is true. Sometimes consumer goods are "loss leaders". Sometimes a company is attempting to liquidate stock on old items. There are a few different reasons why retail goods might be cheaper. That's why I avoided pointing out PriceWatch until just now, because their goods may very well be underpriced. But when you look across a large number of major retailers and consistently come up with lower results than the supposed wholesale cost, then something fishy is going on.

I may be completely wrong in my thinking here, so if you are familar with the intimate workings of a large computer manufacturing business' purchasing department, please correct me.

Not a large company, no. However, I have gotten direct quotes from various manufacturers for electronic parts for a to-be-commericialized item I've been working on. One thing I've learned in doing this is that the lower the cost of a part, the more you have to work to find it. Sure, it's easy to pay Digikey $80 a unit for that 300MHz PowerPC core. But a better core can be had for far less if you're willing to work a little harder to get it.

The same has held true for the electromechanical parts I've needed. Digikey tells me that an ejectable smartcard reader is going to cost $10-$15 a unit (no enclosure!), but I later find that I can get the part for $2.50 from elsewhere. Things get even better when I can get the precise part I actually need (I didn't actually need the ejector, a half-insert reader was fine by me) as opposed to the 3,000,000 feature part they're trying to sell me. :-)

IF one knows that one wants a machine that will run "new" release programs in 3 years, that means AMD64, rather than 32-bit
( compatibility-problems, as-in programs simply not running, have been found on the Intel implimentation of x86_64 )

That cuts down the field greatly.

THEN, one looks at whether the thing is guaranteed to be wordprocessing-only
( or equivalent non-taxing, ie NO multimedia-rendering or vid-conferencing, ferinstance ),
and one can sanely go with single-channel-RAM ( socket 754 ),
rather-than dual-channel-RAM ( socket-939 or socket-940 )

THEN once looks at what kind of expandibility one may need, later. . .
Video-card?
No-longer does AGP count ( they aren't making top-end ones anymore, and soon won't be making middle-of-the-road ones, either! ),
so one requires PCIe ( PCI-Express ) 16x on the motherboard.

Does one want to be forced to find a firewire-card to add-in later? or does one want everything built-in?

Does one want the ability to add-in PCIe add-in cards for, say, high-end-audio, or for video-capture, or for ANYTHING?

one needs PCIe slots, then, too ( PCI is going the way of the dodo )

All in all, the one mobo I know-of, that at-the-moment covers it ( including a 4x PCIe slot, for later! ),
is by MSI http://www.msicomputer.com/index2.asp

Unfortunately, it's got a fan on the chipset,
so it's an on-when-one-uses-it cheap workstation-board,
rather-than an always-on everything-server-board
( fans die after however many running-hours they happen to survive )

http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_spec.asp?mode l=K8N_Neo4_Platinum&class=mb

Abit's got one that is missing the PCIe 4x slot, but that has no chipset-fan, called the
Abit AN8 Ultra
http://www.abit-usa.com/products/mb/techspec.php?c ategories=1&model=278

Right, that's the mobo, howabout the CPU?
syncronous-with-the-RAM is a good rule

IF the mobo can deal-with PC3200 RAM ( these 2 can ), then that means the RAM's communicating-speed is 400MHz ( rather-than, say, 333MHz )
Since there isn't any valid thing as 1/3 of a wait-cycle ( it's either 0 or it's 1, with computers ), I want the CPU's actual physical speed to be a multiple of that, like say 2000MHz.
That gets the speed, so what choices are there?
cheap, and I wasn't able to get-one, is the
SDA3400DIO28W Sempron 3400+ Socket 939 ( the "3400+" is the approximate equivalent in Intel-speed, known-as its "rating" )
More expensive, and having more on-chip cache-memory, is the
2.0 GHz 939-pin Athlon 64 3200+
Ultimate capability would-be the X2 chip ( 2 Athlon64 cores in one chip, so when one program is swamping one core, the system still responds )
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInforma tion/0,,30_118_9485_13041%5E13076,00.html
shows that cheapest multiple-of-400MHz X2 chip is the "3800+" and the highest-end is 2.4GHz "4800+"
Hit http://www.pricewatch.com/ to discover what sane-prices are for the things, but be sitting-down when you see the highest-end ones. . .

Case? Aluminum. That keeps hard-drives cooler ( whole case acts like a nice-big heatsink ).
Make decorations for it using pipecleaners & a hot-melt-glue gun, if you want. . . : )

Video-card?
IF you want quiet, go for ATI rather-than NVidia ( fan-speed, I'm talking about, here ),
and if you want cheap, grab some X300 or something,
the higher-end cards the X800 XL is a very good bu

I get my stuff from price watch.

First I find the processor I want, then I get the system board, memory, HD, DVD, case, keyboard, monitor, etc.. Having saved by building it myself, I like to splurge on a nice case, aluminium or fish tank cases are nice.

Is it worth it? Probably not unless you wanted a memory stick too. Personally, the memory stick is way too small for my tastes. I'd rather spend my money on 1g SD card that will work in my PDA, computer, camera, etc.

Its just a gimmick to get attention and its working.

I find all players with memory sticks, memory cards and harddisks way too expensive. The good old portable 12cm CD players are much more affordable. They start at $30 including shipping (see for example pricewatch). CD-R's at a price of $11/100 disks incl. shipping are almost for free. I would also not like to constantly upload music onto the memory or harddisk every time I am in the mood for something else. But, over time I got a bit tired of the bulky disks. So I decided to go for 8cm instead of 12cm. The 8cm disks are handy, the player is not much larger, both fit into a pocket and they occupy almost no space on the desk. There are cute little wallets for the mini CD available, too. The only thing that bothers me a bit is the limited capacity of 8cm CD's. 200+ MB (units) is barely enough for two albums compressed as MP3's with variable bit rate (EAC+Lame). For a long, good concerto the capacity is sometimes only sufficient for one Audio-CD. So, what I really like to see is a tiny MP3-player for 8cm DVD's. Those little 8cm DVD's have a capacity of about 1.5 GB and their price beats any memory stick and harddisk. Unfortunately most regular (12cm) DVD players would not play MP3 files from an ISO 9660/UDF formatted hybrid, thus I expect this could be a problem for the little players, too. But, I think a little bit of good will and better firmware can make all the difference. If someone knows about such a portable 8cm DVD MP3-player, then please let us know. IMHO that would be a great alternative to all those hundred+ dollar gadgets. Anything is fine with me, except SONY. Otherwise I think that would be a great new product for the market and hope someone picks up the idea, wouldn't it?

1) Case/PSU - http://www.pricewatch.com/prc.aspx?i=74&a=4777 - We'll still say under $50
2) The iSite is a webcam - lots of places for under $50 (with the added benefit of being able to move said webcam ;)
3) OS - any free linux/unix flavor you'd like, or $90 - $100 for XP Home, if you so choose

With those we're at between $50 and $150 added to the original total of $839, which is still under $1000.

Plus, the keyboard/mouse combo for $100 was just to get bluetooth in there. Get a standard keyboard and mouse for less than $50 and go out and grab a $20 bluetooth dongle.

Also, what's with the "student discount?" I got a $35 copy of WinXP Pro and a $25 of Office XP Pro through our university as per the student discount. Pretty sure that's not available to most people, however.

"you are usually within 15% of the performance of a $500 at around $250"

Nonsense

http://www.pricewatch.com/
7800GTX: $460
6800GT: $280

http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2575&p=4
http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2466&p=4

F.E.A.R
7800GTX: 53 fps (+65%)
6800GT: 32 fps

Battlefield 2
7800GTX: 79 fps (+108%)
6800GT: 38 fps

How is this a ripoff?

Well, if you're buying 60gig drives for $320, obviously you can't spot a ripoff. I mean, you can get a 7200rpm one for $42. Or maybe you mean a laptop harddrive so that it can be small. Wait, that's $95. Ah, you said plug in to your computer, so I guess you mean a firewire drive. Darn, that's $75

I don't really have anything against ipods, and I do think they're probably worth the price (even though I use my pda for my music playing needs. I'll be the first to admit I'm not a huge music guy though). However, they're not the cheap device you're making them out to be, they are the expensive players of the market. After all, you could be buying a Nomad for $279 $229 with the rebate, but I refuse to count that as the actual price, I don't believe in rebates.

How is this a ripoff?

Well, if you're buying 60gig drives for $320, obviously you can't spot a ripoff. I mean, you can get a 7200rpm one for $42. Or maybe you mean a laptop harddrive so that it can be small. Wait, that's $95. Ah, you said plug in to your computer, so I guess you mean a firewire drive. Darn, that's $75

I don't really have anything against ipods, and I do think they're probably worth the price (even though I use my pda for my music playing needs. I'll be the first to admit I'm not a huge music guy though). However, they're not the cheap device you're making them out to be, they are the expensive players of the market. After all, you could be buying a Nomad for $279 $229 with the rebate, but I refuse to count that as the actual price, I don't believe in rebates.

Really? You can get a new console for less than $100?

"I'm seeing Intel dual-core processors appearing in

$746 isn't that bad. Shipping included.

LK

A friend at work just bought the PSP version of SSX 4. He was royally pi$$ed to find out that the PSP version he just bought is 10 dollars more than the regular console versions.

On the one hand, I'm surprised that as many UMD movie disks are selling as they are. The idea of portable movies isn't new or revolutionary, and the PSP has the capacity to playback movies from resonably affordable flash memory.

On the other hand, I can't see strapping a cheap digitizer to an LCD screen, feeding the video to a television, and having it be anything other than crappy. PSP UMD disks have resolutions significantly below broadcast quality, and not at all up to DVD standards. But if you really wanted to do something like that, the best way would be to use a inline digitizer that snags the signal before it goes to the LCD screen. That way the resolution you do have remains as crisp as it is likely to be, short of having a dedicated UMD player.

And don't worry too much about voiding your warranty. Sony has already made clear that nothing that is likely to go wrong with your PSP is covered under warranty.

Why not build your own? Check out somewhere like pricewatch

You can get a 400G HD for about $190 and a P4 combo board for about $160.

Install slackware and you're ready to rock and roll.

Good luck.

If all you want to play is Homebrew then you could just buy the Gameboy Advance Movie Player and then get the Firmware Hack and then if you don't mind opening up your DS and flashing the firmware you can play homebrew on the GBA Movie Player without a passme (plus it gets rid of that annoying as fuck touch to being screen at the beginning). Total cost? $25 + shipping + CF card which a 32 MB Generic card (I mean you don't need a sansdisc for this right?) can be found at PriceWatch for $11 shipped. So for under $40 you can do homebrew on DS and for comparison the smallest Memory Stick Pro Duo I could find is a 64MB one that costs $13 shipped. Also the GBA MP can play movies and MP3s as well.

Look at Intel's profit margin, it's below 25%. http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=intc/. There are lots of expenses in running a company. Only the fastest P4s are in the $600+ region, many are below $100 retail. http://www.pricewatch.com/. The cheap ones cost every bit as much to make as the expensive ones; it's just a matter of supply and demand.

I don't think I have ever seen a P4 for that much. Looking at pricewatch, it looks like almost all variety of P4s can be had for under $300.

Maybe not for $50 but is $53 close enough??? Of course...If I can go up to a hundred bucks I can get myself a nice USB 2.0, 2.5" 60GB HDD for only $95. Most of the Xbox 360's accessories are not what I would call expensive, but the HDD and memory cards are are simply ridiculous. $40 for a 64MB flash drive??? You can find smaller USB thumb drives up in the 256MB and 512MB range for just under $40. Aside from that, the X360 isn't too expensive.

Maybe not for $50 but is $53 close enough??? Of course...If I can go up to a hundred bucks I can get myself a nice USB 2.0, 2.5" 60GB HDD for only $95. Most of the Xbox 360's accessories are not what I would call expensive, but the HDD and memory cards are are simply ridiculous. $40 for a 64MB flash drive??? You can find smaller USB thumb drives up in the 256MB and 512MB range for just under $40. Aside from that, the X360 isn't too expensive.

Yes, you can.

And Pricewatch finds it cheaper.*

*I wouldn't actually buy my drive from one of the low-price places, but it shows it's possible to find 250gb for >$100.

http://www.pricewatch.com/ is more useful for finding something like a USB cable. And there, you can find a $3 USB cable that actually costs $3, after shipping, its $7.56 from HP.

People with an IQ of 110 add up the prices and notice that a ready-built computer is cheaper.

People with an IQ of 115 figure out that Best Buy is a terrible place to buy PC parts.

Check out Pricewatch. You can almost always build a PC for less than an equivalent prebuilt system. You just have to be careful when selecting which vendor you buy from.

What would be the point? You can already get a 2GB SD card.