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PC Prices Reach $300 Milestone
Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "Prices for fully loaded, name-brand PCs have slipped below $300 in the last few weeks, a major milestone. 'Ten or so years ago, when PCs cost five or even 10 times what they do now, it was common for analysts to say that they would never become a staple in homes until they were priced the way consumer electronics were, usually defined as costing less than $300,' Lee Gomes writes in the Wall Street Journal. 'In the days when PCs were $2,000 and even more, that target seemed to be something of a fantasy. Now, PCs cost less than some telephones--and less than a lot of TV sets--and can be found in roughly three-quarters of U.S. homes. But while they are priced like consumer electronics, the machines still aren't even remotely as easy to use, and the trend lines there aren't particularly encouraging.'"
I now expect I'll be modded up as insightful. :-)
But in truth... Running IE and Outlook Express out of the box when pre-configured by Dell and hooked up by your local cable/DSL installer, vs. running Firefox and Thunderbird when configured and hooked up by your friend who knows their way around Linux... about the same learning curve. The trick is that if your friend who knows Linux set you up right, you won't be infected with three viruses and 18 types of spyware six months later.
Windows vs. Linux in usage... about the same. Maintenance... Linux wins.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
Didn't this happen already with the mac mini?
Or do they specifically mean usable PC's?
Of course they're harder to use! I'd like to see any other consumer electronic do half of what is possible on a computer. That's why they aren't incredibly easy to use, easy enough for any idiot: they are very powerful and the possibilities are many. Maybe somebody should make an OS that even completely idiotic people can use.
Interesting article...but it seemed to fail to mention one important dynamic.
As time passes, operating systems and applications become progressively larger and more complex, requiring correspondingly more robust hardware to run on. I doubt that the 'entry level PC' (whatever that means) of a year ago is equal to the 'entry level PC' of today.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
I don't know about you, but computers are fairly simple to use out of the box nowadays. Plug it in, turn it on, point and click. Unless companies are still shipping DOS boxes to the massess.... I see more and more adults, kids and teenagers using computers than I ever have. So, it appears that computers are easy to use as long as the user has some sort of intelligence.
'Ten or so years ago, when PCs cost five or even 10 times what they do now,
I got a fully loaded (ie Windows and such) for ~$300 about eight years ago. It was (and still is..runs like a champ) an Emachines which I would call a major brand. These prices have been around for a while.
Wouldn't it be nice if Dell preconfigured Firefox, Thunderbird, and OpenOffice, and stripped out some of the junk in Microsoft Windows?
I could be wrong, but hasn't Walmart been selling PCs for $199 for a year or so now? Isn't this guy a little late to the party?
Pythagoras would be so proud of us.
Probably offtopic, but if the submitter is really from the WSJ, it's a sign of how mainstream Slashdot has become that it now gets stories from the ultimate bastion of stuffed-shirt corporate America.
These cheap pc's are nothing but junk. Spend the extra money on a good machine
*Ducks*
All your
I can build you a *brand new* P2 for a whooping $50
Prices for fully loaded, name-brand PCs have slipped below $300 in the last few weeks, a major milestone.
The PCs that are below $300 may be 'brand name' but they are hardly what I'd call 'fully loaded.' Usually 128MB memory and a Celeron or Sempron. Definitely not the Rolls-Royce of computing.
This must be some new definition of "fully loaded" that was previously unaware of.
Hey, I just noticed something... The Wall Street Journal was (I thought) one of the few successful pay-for-access websites on the internet. What's with these free articles? Is this a new thing for them? If so, t's kindof cool.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
How much does an OEM copy of Windows cost these days? This must affect the final price quite considerably.
I was just at a yard sale and got a PC called a "Commodore 64" for 10 dollars with like 50 games. I expected the graphics to be a bit better but this "Radar Rat Race" just roxorz!
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
get ready for the obvious answers ... price, no vendor lock in, valgrind
You have to remember that, although low, we have also had some inflation over the last 20-30 years. So, that $300 PC is more like a $150 machine of a couple of decades ago. Compare that with the VIC-20, which cost about $400 in 1981 (with 64k of memory).
As prices have fallen, I've quickly reached a point where getting a new machine every 6-12 months is pretty normal (though I still tend to stay on the lower end of the spectrum). However, people still keep wanting advice on keeping their 700Mhz machine running when it's clearly not working so well anymorre. I just picked up a 1.1Ghz/256MB/40GB machine last week for $100. I still tend to put lower end machines to use (firewalls, fileservers, webservers, etc.), but for general consumers, PC's have reached disposable pricing. When you look at what places like GeekSquad charge per hour for diagnosis and repair, it gets pretty hard to recommend anything other than a new box when things go bad.
When asked, "I've got this problem. How would you fix it?" I now pretty much just say, "Personally, I'd just buy a new machine."
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
It is a pity that the average consumer still believes that a computer is like any other home appliance - it should last, unattended and with little regular maintenance, for years upon years. Computers are not like refrigerators or microwaves or dishwashers - they are a category of their own. They /do/ require regular upkeep via software and regular cleaning of the hardware. Unless you've got a case that has an Ionic Breeze built into it (I challenge thee, O gladiators of Slashdot), your computer gets dusty.
It won't be until computers are in the $100 price range that the average consumer thinks of them the way a lot of enthusiasts do: a tool with perqs.
Until that time, people like us can make money as Mr. Fix-its and computational handymen.
Then there is the other commonly heard phrase: "Well, you fixed it a week ago and it's broke again." To which I normally respond (at least to the people I call friends): "Have you used it since I fixed it?"
Computers don't break themselves. Users break computers.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
That's in fact a great idea.
I'm your huckleberry
Remember back in the 1980's when Commodore, Tandy, Atari, and Texas Instruments lead the pack in home computers? These machines were priced right around the magical $300 mark back then. So how did we go from such great, cheap machines to the expensive PC-compatibles just a few years later?
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
These days, if my VCR broke, I'd never get it repaired which I might have a few years ago. I'd just go out and buy a new one (That is, until I get around to building a PVR).
How long until the average Joe gets a virus and chucks his (Hopefully uninfected) data on a USB memory stick and grabs a new Dell? Getting the virus removed could very well be harder to learn to do or more expensive to get someone else to do than just grabbing a new PC. If Windows pushed the ability to transfer data between computers easily, a PC could easily become a disposable item for the general public.
Then we could get a hold of the turfed out computers, fix them up and use them. Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those things... (Sorry)
For those looking for an example: http://microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtm l?product_id=184679
Yeah, not a great computer, but does what most folks are looking for.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
although my latest box isnt an off the shelf type, i put together a dual opteron box for less than 500. that should tell you how much computer component prices have fallen.
Surely, hopefully, this will have a knock-on effect for other electronic hardware, with prices showing a downward trend in order to try & keep sales from the PC. I must say that for what you get inside the typical PC these days, it's incredible value for money.
Also, this has to put pressure on our friends in Redmond, as their OS tends to become the priciest "component" of any new PC not running an alternative OS. Couple this with the Mac switch to Intel, and BG & Co could really be in a spot of bother... Interesting indeed.
Let's face it, most people have a hard enough time dealing with the remote control. You have the universal remotes that control TV, VCR/DVD, and other devices. Computers have many more features than these consumer electronic devices offer, so of course they won't be as easy to use.
It also depends on what you plan to do with your computer. If you use Quickbooks for example, that program alone has more complexity than most home theaters. The more complex tasks are that you do on a computer, the more complex the use of the computer tends to become. A dedicated web browser is closer to what these people want. They don't want a computer, they want something dedicated to running a single program.
Dell and other OEMs add so much junk to a computer that it also complicates things for many end-users. Most never use the pre-installed programs on these computers and buy their own or have a friend recomend the best ones to use and then use them. Of course, they still have the original junk left behind. How many systems have both MS Works and MS Office installed on them? How about all the stupid support tools that most people never want? They add complexity without functionality.
As the level of computer knowledge rises in the general public, stupid articles complaining about computer complexity will go away. I give it another 30 years or so.
They are not down to $300 yet but the price of laptops have been falling pretty dramatically too. I bought a laptop for $1900 a year ago (not gonna tell you which brand, so there, but it's easily fast enough to play most high end games). That gave my wife laptop envy and so I finally bought her a new laptop just 2 months ago for her birthday (10 months after I bought mine). Her machine is the same brand, with a faster processor, better graphics card, bigger hard drive and it was down to $1400. Not I have laptop envy. For comparison, my desktop machine (3 years old) cost me $2500, and both laptops are faster.
It looks like we may very well be close to the age of (for all practical purposes) free hardware...
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
They forgot to add that they also got to a new level for crapy pc under 300$
Cmon people! When i look at the cost of separate hardware i cant build a pc under 700$ (canadian money)
Unless they have carton box to put the plastic hard disc and the cheap ram!
You can't do this in a brick and mortor ...
... The machine being discussed here, the Dimension 2400, began last week at $299. By Friday, it was already selling for $1 less."
"A Dell spokesman notes that the cost of the components that make up a PC drop an average of half a percent a week
How long does it take Best Buy/Comp USA to adjust? I would imagine to adjust the price of a computer by $1 would be a net loss after you consider the amount of labor to simply change the display prices! I despise Dell's - 'fixing' my parents computer convinced me of that - but I gotta admire how they take advantage of the flexibility of the web.
I disagree. Purely on the grounds that many users have Windows experience from office work, and also because Gnome and KDE are both built on the same principles as Windows XP and use exactly the same concepts. There's no usability advantage to Linux when configured thus.
An obvious security advantage, yes, but at the cost of obscurity. I build PCs for home users and I find it very difficult to sell Linux and mac based systems because users insist on being able to run the educational/edu-tainment titles they can buy in PCWorld (here in the UK) or presumably CompUSA on your side of the pond
Ultimately, home users want Windows and are generally willing to pay out for NAT routers, antivirus and anti-spyware apps to protect them from the consequences. As an aside, the cheapest branded PCs you can buy in the UK are about £300, which considering the state of the Dollar on the foreign exchange markets is a bit of a rip-off...
You can get a Mac mini for the same price (no monitor though)!
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Rocketships are cheaper than a horse and buggy was for your great-great-great-grandfather, but still not as easy to use!
A long time ago I had a computer called a Commodore 64, and I'm pretty sure it only cost about $300.
Apple invents everything new in computers.
( rolls eyes )
Personal computers are not supposed to be as easy to use as a TV or fridge or other consumer appliance. They're complex, powerful machines, and that's what makes them so useful - if they were that easy to use, what good would they actually be?
I think it's incredibly pig-headed of people to expect to be able to use something as complex as a computer without taking some training, or at least bothering to RTFM. If you want simple, buy a GameBoy.
They should be more like appliances. Internally they should be self healing. And externally they should be more like my TiVO that has just sit there and run 24/7 for years. No Ionic Breeze necessary.
For 90+% of the population computers should be more like appliances, that just sit there and work. Not enough effort has been made by the hardware or software manufactures towards this end.
What do you know I wrote a novel
So, your garage sale purchase included backward compatibility! Totally forward thinking. This "Commodore" company really understands the course it's charting. Invest now.
(Though personally, I think consoles will always make more sense for gaming. You'd want an Intellivision for the games.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Laptops are still kinda pricey though aren't they? I am still waiting until my powerbook is obsolete (according to my demand from it) to buy my windows 15 inch widescreen to replace my current desktop pc.
...is a laptop below $100.
While lower prices for desktop machines is great, we need to find a way to get laptops down to a price point where they can be used to replace textbooks for highschool students.
This textbook replacement laptop doesn't necessarily have to have every possible feature, but I think it does need networking, USB, a harddrive, and a display that is fast enough for word processing and simple animations. The ability to play music might insure that the kids don't lose it. The kids can play FPS games at home on their $300 PCs; this machine is meant for study.
Obviously, Linux will be part of that solution, since Windows simply costs too much money.
The educational software for such machines should all be Open Source. This will make it easier for governments and school systems to adapt the software to their particular needs. Each school district can employ a couple of Open Source programmers. Think of what the combined capabilities of so many programmers will be when it comes to developing educational software.
It's sad that we don't hear about wonderful educational software. The people who work on such software aren't held in the same regard as those who work on business enterprise applications or on games, yet educational software could potentially have much farther reaching impacts.
-All that is gold does not glitter - Tolkien
www.ra
Ten or so years ago, when PCs cost five or even 10 times what they do now, it was common for analysts to say that they would never become a staple in homes until they were priced the way consumer electronics were, usually defined as costing less than $300. In the days when PCs were $2,000 and even more, that target seemed to be something of a fantasy.
I dunno about this, it seems to me that PCs have been a household staple for a while now. Even when they still cost $1000, they were common enough that it would be a surprise for a household not to have a PC in it. If you also consider the number of homes which have an obsolete PC (older than 5 years old or so) which are pretty much given away at rummage sales and such, the PC is just about ubiquitous.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I don't know if I'd want a computer that worked like a cell phone.
o ws-exploit-catagory-is-today worries at all. I don't think browsing the web, reading email, and opening various documents is harder on windows, nor is fixing windows any easier than linux - in fact it may very well be easier to fix windows (that's nother discussion), but the shear frequency of the need to fix windows itself seems to represent one of the factors in determining people's perception of how easy it is to use. You can't talk to somebody about computers for five minutes without the topic of viruses comming up. Most 'hard-core' windows users/advocates seem to see viruses, worms and the like as an unavoidable part of computing. Maybe if MS would clean up its act, computers would be as easy to use as cell phones.
As for how easy computers are to use, I put my roommate, just an average consumer-grade computer user, down in front of my thinkpad running Debian (testing), and she was browsing the web, reading email, and doing research without a lick of help from me. Her response to "its running linux" was "what's that?"
Easy to use, and no virus/trojan/worm/zombie/whatever-the-latest-wind
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Question: Is there a way we in the Free Open Source Movement can increase pressure on M$?
Real solutions are needed.
Ten or so years ago, when PCs cost five or even 10 times what they do now
In the early 90s, an Atari ST cost about $400.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
You don't clean your refrigerator and your microwave? That's disgusting.
Computers don't break themselves. Users break computers.
Well, that's quickly changing: these days, computers can break themselves, be it via automatic upgrades, spyware, or worms that come in through vendor-supplied security holes.
Its a pity that engineers designing the software and hardware on a modern PC don't believe it should be like any other appliance.
We're half a decade into the 21st century. Computers should be like a dishwasher or a microwave. They should not require me to do any regular cleaning, any regular patching. It should just work.
Its a failure on the part of the industry that this isn't the case.
I would love nothing more then to have every brand new computer running linux on them. The fact of the matter is that installing an application for linux and its removable is more complex for the basic user. Until theres a universal package and delivery system for linux that the average joe can point-and-click to install, linux is not going to take off the ground. And yes I know of apt-get and emerge and their GUI frontends, but really they arent simply enough. Remember we are working for more of a duh-duh idiot then you or me.
I question the wisdom behind making such cheap computers. It seems to me that such cheap goods will encourage a "disposable" mentality to the computers. When this happens we can expect to see people merely throwing their old computers out on a scale worse than today.
Computers seem to be the new styrofoam cup: we use them for a while, but they're with us forever. In my most humble opinion, I think the industry as a whole halt their progression towards ever cheaper computers for a while and instead focus on making fully recyclable computers.
here, I'll spell it out for you
"how did we go from the $400 commodore 64 to the $4000 IBM PC within a year or two?"
no, we didn't have 1000% inflation in the early 80s
I recently bought a new PC. I paid the same as I did for my first Intel PC 15 years ago. Yes, cheap PC's has gotten cheaper, but the price for a top notch PC with all the bells and whistles has been more or less stable for quite some time.
Underholdning.info
I really thing the computing industry and especially the software industry needs to grow up, seriously. There need to be better standardisation. Note that Windows is not a standard as Windows isnt compatible with windows even between variuos upgrades.
Using a computer today demands you know exactly what you are doing and why, For your casual surfer or media user that should not be tha case. All they need to know is where to go and what to watch. Its the OS that demands the users help, not the other way around. No sane user wants to maintain the computer. He do it because he have to.
The fast solution is cramming out specialized computers but that hits the wall pretty quick because of the lack of real standards on the net.
Until we have some sane (widely used by even Microsoft) standards for the web nothing will change and every appliance will fall flat on its face. The industry created this mess with their "not invented here" syndrome and they are the ones who should clean the mess up.
HTTP/1.1 400
Idiocy. Some things are complex and require more knowledge to use effectively than others not because they are poorly designed but because they are much more powerful and versatile. How many functions a typical representative of "consumer electronic" serves? Even a TV needs just on/off, channel up, channel down, volume up & down to operate (the rest is hardly used). Is anything more complex in the consumer electronic field?
What we have to do to shove this plain old truth down the underdeveloped journalistic cerebrums?
One of the main reasons that we have cheap PC's can be traced back to the company "Emachines." God knows how many people bought an Emachines PC before they were bought by Dell and paid for their cheap PC with their hard earned cash, only for them to just plain die due to shitty-ass components. Emachines made HP and Compaq go "Oh shit, somebody finally figured us out; that it does not cost anything near the $3,000 we have been charging for a shitty-ass PC" Oh, and fuck Linux. If you hate Microsoft, just buy a Mactel now. :)
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
Just pointing our something that struck me as odd.
Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
eMachines are pieces of shit. I have never seen one "run like a champ". The few I have seen came with 64 or 128 megs of ram (barely enough to boot Windows;), a 10 GB HD (when others were including 40 as a minimum); and yester-year's processors that wholesalers are trying to dump. Even then you couldn't get one for less than ~$400.
FreeBSD: The Power to Serve!
They will click on a similar thing next time it pops up in front of them!
What "appliance" computers need is an interface more like PDA interfaces than Windows; i.e. after booting, big buttons that say: email, browse the intarweb, play a game, listen to music, watch a movie, etc.
Sounds like somebody griping about losing business. I don't know what you're talking about, but if you've ever been inside of a business where computers are just tools, you'll find computers running happily along for *years* without being touched (physically or otherwise) that work just fine. I know that in my shop, I just pulled out a laptop that was running for 3 year as my router/DHCP server. It was actually behind a pile of boxes in a corner and my employees didn't even know it existed. That IS the way computers should work.
You sound like a crooked auto mechanic that is disappointed that cars don't need a tune-up every 10K miles and an oil change every 3K miles, anymore.
Last line of the summary: "But while they are priced like consumer electronics, the machines still aren't even remotely as easy to use, and the trend lines there aren't particularly encouraging."
That's what you're buying with the $200 difference. A Mac's still expensive for an entry-level PC, but it's not 2-3 times as expensive any more.
That's funny, because in my experience, computers do last, unattended and with no maintenance, for years and years on end.
In my 20+ years using computers, I only dusted out the inside of a computer once. I did that replacing the harddrive during the only serious hardware failure I have experienced in that 20+ years of computing. My MTBF is 10 years without dusting. Why would I dust?
Software upgrades are necessary? On what planet? Oh, I guess you must be from planet internet - the source of most modern computer problems. Why does everybody today presume that a computer is just a net-access device? You can do a lot more things with a computer than surf pr0n, you know. I still have a PC running Windows 95, with no firewall or anything else on it. It makes a great machine for those older games which require emulation to run on XP. It's also great for anything I don't want broken into by some nefarious hacker. My requirements for the machine haven't changed - why should my software?
It seems that the problem with most need for software upgrades come from changes in the internet environment. That is a completely separate issue from regular computer maintenance. I agree with you that computers don't break themselves - users break them. I think you'll find the same to be true for tables, chairs, and other very reliable items around the home.
I have enemies that are cheaper
Lookout! http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/mai n/Gates_gives_magical_software_tour.html
Of course not. Never. I mean, who ever heard of a $500 phone? It's not like you could spend two minutes with Froogle and find a bevy of them. Oh, wait.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Bringing down the prices of pc to less than $300 alone is not going to increase pc penetration among the masses. It is the education and knowledge imparted that is going to bring about the change.
Chris ,
Php Programmers.
'But while they are priced like consumer electronics, the machines still aren't even remotely as easy to use, and the trend lines there aren't particularly encouraging.' ...uh.. well one is.. http://www.apple.com/macmini/
I've had to explain to my mother how to drag and drop a file to copy it in Windows 30 times over the past 5 years and she keeps forgetting. Sure, it's probably a convenient excuse to get me to talk to her for more than 5 minutes, but I've got other shit to do.
C'mon dude, this is your Mom we're talking about.
Besides, it's not like she's charging you rent to live in her basement.
I read your post as "blank pages"....
Thought to myself... "Odd. I would figure blank pages would look the same in... ohhhhhh.. BANK pages...."
Karnal
The Dell computer that was mentioned included a celeron processor and 256 MG RAM and a 40 GB Hard drive, when Frye's is selling 1GB sticks for around $99.00 and 100GB hard drives also inder $100.00
A buyer would be better off getting a 2-year old Pentium or AMD system for a similar price. The box would say fewer MHZ, probably, but a higher quality, most likely.
Would you prefer a bran new Dodge Neon, or a 5-year old Mercedes?
This isn't Wired . Or have you forgotten the myriad New York Times, Washington Post and BBC stories linked to from the front page?
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Well, if you already have a monitor it's $250 BUT you have no option for not getting 6 "free" months of AOL or Earthlink. I'd imagine that the $299/$250 machine is actually subsidized by AOL or EarthLink in the hopes that people buying the machines will be signed up and never survive the hassle of unsigning up. This is more than likely a pc sale subsidized by the internet providers and is not actually a sub-$300 computer by a major computer seller.
The reason is: with PCs, I have a consistant interface. Even if I use different OSes, the idea is the same, just follow the menus.
."
Maybe it's just me, but I still haven't mastered my stereo, or my TV/DVD/VCR/Remotes. My PC, by contrast, is a cinche.
With my entertainment system, it's always: " . . . no wait, if I'm going to tape the show, *first* I have to VCR power, *then* power-TV, then switch to the other remote, then push that little button on the top - no wait - that was with old remote - with *this* remote, I have to use the VCR remote to turn on the TV, I only use the TV remote to change to channel 3, and to adjust the volume. Damnit, that didn't work . .
And every settup is completely different. I don't have that sort of problem with a PC, with a PC I just follow the menus.
I've seen $180 PCs (Fry's Great Quality) with Linux or $270 with MS-WinXP. Obviously MS-WinXP after all mfr discounts ends up costing $90 at retail.
Where OS licencing costs are important, Linux has a huge advantage. Nevermind the slightly different look-and-feel of Linux GUI apps -- if an untrained user can surf the web, run email and maybe wordprocess, s/he's happy. If it's more stable and requires less maintenance then they don't need MSCEs. But pretty soon they'll be looking for software like TurboTax. And if there are enough of them, the sw vendors won't want to lose sales. Voila--Linux World Domination [SM]
I know several people who would benefit from having a computer in their home. Until recently the barrier has been price, but now, even at $300 they're still reluctant and I don't blame them. It is entirely because they are still paying for more than they need. All they want is:
What we need is Palm OS x86. The only reason I wouldn't recomend a Palm to these people is they don't need to pay a premium for a low res LCD screen and a lithium battery and don't need to make do with portable input devices, a keyboard and trackball would be more than adequate (if a mouse is needed at all). If they could pick up a device that did all this, but was as easy to use as their phone I'm pretty sure they could be very marketable.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
Turbotax and other such non-game home software have mac versions, I'm wondering if the move by Apple to x86 will mean it would be possible for a combined Mac-Linux version of any such software to be made - would mean of course an open library API by Apple
Many places still sell PCs with Microsoft's proprietory Windows software installed which means you could have bought the same PC for about $230 in average but you've been ripped off by $70 in licensing fees and your new PC is virus and spyware ready. How does that make you feel?
Refrigerators and TV sets once were considered a luxury, now you will hardly find a household without them. The features, though, are basically the same as 50 years ago.
The same is not true for the PC and probably never will be, as it is a potentially a universal machine, which is a mixed blessing.
While prices may continue to go down, complexity doesn't. Au contraire: Here in Germany, discount retailer sells thousands and thousands of 3 GHz "Mulimedia" PCs which in their current incarnation are advertised as the one-size-fits all equivalent of a Home Office, a video console, a VCR, a DVD Player/Recorder, a Digital TV receiver, a Digital Radio ...
Moms and Pops read this list and expect the reliability and simplicity of all these appliances. What they actually get is a very fragile pile of interrelated software and hardware components.
I love expandable, hackable, flexible machines like any other ./ reader. But I am afraid that a PC as ubiquitous as the TV set would have to be very similar to just that - a kind of black box that neither Grandpa nor a piece of malware can break.
And cars still seem to remain just as expensive as they were 10 years ago.
Perhaps someone will suggest an universal remote control. I myself have two "universal" remote controls-- one for a ATSC tuner, and one for a receiver. They are mutually incompatible, as the tuner is sufficiently obscure that its codes are unknown, and A/V receivers, as a class, are ignored by most remote control designers.
Perhaps the engineers responsible think people buy HDTV tuners, and then, completely ignore the dolby digital capabilities of such in favor of good old analog stereo. Ah well.
The Logitech Harmony remotes are reportedly well designed, but they are rather expensive.
"Macs are just WAY too expensive. I can get a complete system for under $300, or I can spend almost DOUBLE on a Mac Mini."
There's some concern that, when Macs run on Intel, emulators will run so well that companies will stop making Mac versions of their software. The idea is that companies will just tell Mac users to use VMWare, or WINE, or VirtualPC.
I'd argue that, with PCs being so cheap, they might as well just tell Mac users to buy a PC. It won't cost much more than an emulator+Windows, after all.
And if they're going to do that, it doesn't matter if Apple stays on PowerPC or not.
(And, really, PCs are so ubiquitous anyway that if a vendor wants to ditch the Mac, chances are their Mac customers can get access to a PC without too much difficulty.)
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
Gomes is well known for slow and very casual reporting. Lindows and a number of Linux makers have been under this price for some time. But the WSJ, which can't seem to recognize this marketplace. Typical major media blindness.
If all the old people would just die already, everyone would know how to use a computer.. they are screwing up the curve!
-- Working to secure tomorrows technology. Honestly Officer!
Computers are not easy to use? Cry me a river! In another generation the people who are still whining about computers being hard to use *in general* are going to be directly analogous to illiterates.
If you cannot keep up with the standard demands of human civilization, your IQ will be reclassified as 100, possibly far 100.
Akarsz Magyar Gentoo fórumot? Akkor
I think this was the reporter who predicted, quite famously, that Larry Ellison didn't want to take over Peoplesoft. Yeah right. What a genius.
I was in Wal-Mart a few days ago, noticing that the 'Mart still sells "The Classics"---that is, out-of-copyright books---and wondered if folks knew they could get them for free via Project Gutenberg or the like.
The guy I was there with derided the effectiveness of Gutenberg, saying that it's wonderful for academics doing research, but few people have computers, and where does PG advertise, anyway?
So, now I just need to make up 'gutenberg.org' stickers and paste them around town.
I wonder how long it'll be before that machine that makes one-off paperbacks (damn it, I can't find the link to it) will appear in the local Kinko's so we can get paperbacks of anything in Gutenberg for five bucks or whatever.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Nobody has mentioned the PS3 or Xbox yet...
Seems to me that the big players like M$ and $ony have already got this figured. The XBox 360 and PS3 might become the first actually successful 'net PCs' when paired with broadband connections. And they will be around the magic price-point too.
The new consoles will be computing appliances because people will be able to have their media, their games and their email/web access in one place on hardware that will be pretty constrained and hence easy to use out of the box. No doubt they will also be practically 'instant-on' like Macs can be.
Infact as we all know Sony are keen to get the PS3 seen as a 'real' computer.
PCs as we know them will be left for professionals, businesses and people who actually *enjoy* administering their systems.
I just bought a Harmony remote about a month ago. It took a phone call to the company to get it to work with my somewhat difficult setup, but once it did, three words: Worth every penny.
Even if it didn't quite function as designed, it would still be worth it. Call up the manufacturers of your components and ask how much it would be to get an OEM replacement remote. Probably about $50 a piece. If you have a TV, Satellite Box, and DVD player, you are talking $150 to replace all three.
You can get the Harmony 676 at New Egg for about $110. Then you take the batteries out of your OEM remotes and put them in a drawer.
Sure, it is a bit of an extravagance, but they really do work well. It is hella cool to see your entire home entertainment system turn on and set itself for whatever you are doing. My family used to have trouble using the system; I think they'll find it easier now.
Anyway, off-topic. PC's are definitely not as easy to use as consumer electronics. Granted, VCR programming might still be a little difficult, but my cheapo VCR can set its own clock and has a simple schedule system for setting channels and duration. How often have you had to open up your DVD player, TV, or VCR to upgrade components? Have you had to flash your TV's firmware?
======
In X-Windows the client serves YOU!
Darn inflation and devaulation. They probably hit the "real" value of 1995 $300 at about $400 today.
No! It's a *SIG*. Keep the Special Interest Groups away! (Con joke!)
What % of that is Windows tax?
(Someone else below pointed out that a gamer-grade graphics card would just about double the price of a $300 machine!)
Have you had to flash your TV's firmware?
Yes
Not everyone wants or needs a PC. Come to think of it, and given the amount of spyware I see on the machines of some people, not everyone should have a PC.
http://jcsnippets.atspace.com/ - a collection of Java & C# snippets
In my 20+ years using computers, I only dusted out the inside of a computer once. I did that replacing the harddrive during the only serious hardware failure I have experienced in that 20+ years of computing. My MTBF is 10 years without dusting. Why would I dust?
Do you keep your computers in a clean room or something? Most modern systems usually come with multiple fans, and generally I only get a year or two out of them before significant dust has built up. Though granted, I've never just let the dust accumulate to see how long until the system fails though.
Damn preview-blindness.
That was suppose to be "< 100", i.e.: less than 100.
Akarsz Magyar Gentoo fórumot? Akkor
Seriously. The major hurtle is "Is a computer easier to use then a car" Almost everyone has a car, or at least knows how to drive one. If computers are on that level of complexity then I think most people will end up adopting one. Computers will never be as easy to use as a toaster, because they do so much more then warming bread.
Hey mister, can I date your daughter?
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Not only are they more versatile than consumer electronics, they are vastly more versatile than the computers of yesteryear.
The first PC that I bought with my own money cost me $2100. It was a 386-DX (not a weenie SX) with 4 MB memory. It cost me about $100 extra for that extra 2MB over the standard 2MB. It had both kinds of floppy drives, an 80MB hard drive, and a VGA card. I ran a program to double the hard drive space, and it f'd up on several occasions and I lost everything. (was it called Stacker?) It was a pretty sweet setup. However, it was not versatile. Software was limited, although I thoroughly enjoyed using Borland Turbo Pascal, Links 386, and Wolfenstein 3D on it. There was no internet (unless you count BBSs). Porn consisted of scans, by someone using one of those hand scanners (anyone else remember those?). Linux didn't even really exist at that time.
How versatile was this machine? Well, for its day it was awesome. But it could do nowhere near what even the most basic machine can do today. Today we can download gigabytes of data over the internet, create and edit videos, create and edit digital photos, listen to music, watch DVDs, burn CDs and DVDs, play games and communicate with people across the world, banking, shopping... The list goes on and on. How on earth does anyone think that by adding all this complexity we should be able to make the PC simpler?
My theory is that the PC will not get simpler, it will get more complex. We are getting more complex in the way we think. We as a whole will understand and be able to use the PC more effectively. You can't make something like the PC as simple as a VCR. (hell, even some people don't understand how to use those) You lose its power if you make it simple enough for the newbie to use. I am only 35 years old, and I didn't have a PC growing up. There will be a day when the PC will be older than everyone on the planet. Then maybe our mindset will change, and there will be no "newbies". My parents do not understand how to use the computer, and barely understand email. They just don't get it. That will not be the case with today's kids. They will not know what it was like without the PC and the internet. Only they will be able to make the industry progress. My 10 year old niece knows how to use a PC better than my parents do. It is just e-volution. :)
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Your 16 year old daughter can carry a 27" television upstairs to her room by herself? She sounds just beastly. Not that there's anything wrong with that...
It always bugs me when people say that Consumer electronics are so easy, and that computers are so difficult to use - they should be as easy as consumer electronics.
Bull!
First of all, on their own, consumer electronics are single-function devices. Reciever: Get sound, put it out to speakers. DVD Player: Read data from DVD, output it to ports on the back of the box. TV: Display video signals.
Each of these on their own are quite easy. Put them all together and you haven't even scratched the surface of the multi-function abilities of your average computer system these days.
My mom is a pretty smart person, but she doesn't even bother trying to figure out how to get all the TV, Cable, DVD player, VCR, and stereo all working together, or how to automagically record a show from the cable BOX interface on the VCR.
But when it comes to the computer, she can figure out just about everything there is to do without any help from me.
One of the big reasons your normal users are getting hammered these days is because of the malware and viruses that are attacking their machines all the time. It's not because they're hard to use - and if your VCR was getting slammed by spyware all day, it would be pretty damned hard to get a show recorded.
The fact is that you can't really compare these things. A Computer system serves quite a different purpose then a home theater system.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
February 19, 2009
The PC industry today announced that it has reached an important milestone in the pricing of personal computers (PCs). A brand new entry level but fully loaded PC may now be had for the bargain price of -$300.00 or less. That is, the computer maker pays the customer $300.00 or more to take the computer off its hands. Customers are still displeased with the price of PCs, though, as most believe they should be paid $500.00 or more to take the computers off the manufacturers' hands.
I know this sounds ridiculous, but at this rate, computers will sell for so cheap that if you're an electronic hobbyist in need of a capacitor to build your latest project, it will be cheaper to buy a brand new computer and unsolder one from the motherboard than to buy a capacitor at Radio Shack.
Its no coincidence that the computer industry, one that is virtually unregulated relative to other industries, has seen the *most* explosive growth in power and innovation over the last 30 years. Its mind boggling. And just what the capitalist theorists always predict ... prices end up falling, and falling, and falling, and falling.
Only wish more politicians and industries would take note.
Maybe off topic but it was specifically mentioned in the linked WSJ article.
A year ago, for instance, a basic mobile phone plan from Verizon cost $39.95 and included 400 minutes of talk time. The price hasn't changed, but the minutes have, increasing to 450. That's a 12-month price drop of 12.5% per minute of talking, which, if it involved PCs, would be downright inflationary.
I found the exact opposite with cellular service. The amount of options and "extras" make the per minute price appear lower but I doubt your actual bill will be any lower at all. I know that Verizon has been shrinking its America Choice coverage area as it decreases roaming agreements with other carriers. Sprint for example, has started charging more for messaging and used to povide free Vision access (internet access via the phone) for free on its higher priced plans but has dropped that. Cingular has NO unlimited messaging option any longer and also charges more for that service as well as its data service. I would say, overall, cell phone service has increased over the last few years. Maybe more minutes are included but they are defineatly making up the difference in other areas. For me to get the same functionality and options I have now with Sprint, would cost me about $40 more a month then it did just two years ago and switching to Verizon or Cingular would cost about $60 more a month then I pay now.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
That page is about updating the firmware on a Set-Top Box (Cable box or satellite receiver).
That's done, generally, by the cable/satellite company, probably without the customer noticing. The box is probably connected to a phone line, and can just download and reflash by itself.
The problem with these $300 PC's is that there garbage. A real computer that has some quality is twice that.
CyberCPU.net
I know this sounds ridiculous, but at this rate, computers will sell for so cheap that if you're an electronic hobbyist in need of a capacitor to build your latest project, it will be cheaper to buy a brand new computer and unsolder one from the motherboard than to buy a capacitor at Radio Shack.
Except that they won't have discrete capacitors on the motherboard. Because, well, they don't. back in the '70s Robert Anton Wilson predicted that computers would get so cheap you'd throw them away because they were cluttering up the place, you'd get them in your breakfast cereal.
You know, we probably hit that point ten years ago. We were certainly there by 2000 when I tossed out a Windows CE handheld that was more powerful than the university minicomputer I was sharing with 35 other users back when Wilson wrote that line... because it had a battery problem, it wasn't worth my time fixing it, and nobody else wanted it either.
Legally, at least, in MA there's a $25 or $40 charge to dispose of hazmat boxes such as computers. These PCs may be reaching throwaway cost points, but when you add the disposal cost back in (which IMHO should be built into the point-of-sale cost) the deal doesn't look quite as good.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
I just priced the same dell 2400 here in the UK. It is £279 ($503). Wake me up when they get cheap this side of the pond.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
My local council recycling plant will not take many paper things, like telephone directories, as they are 'not recyclable', and I am also forbidden to burn them. Hooray for landfill.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
I need a $300 laptop.
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
I think we should try to make the machines more user friendly. ;) :) and 8o sequences.
..... maybe TV?
1. There are too many keys for the average user - we should get rid of those Fsomething, Ctrl-Alt-Shifr-Home business.
2. Still too many keys, we should skip the numerical part, numbers scare non-techies anyway.
3. The ultimate consumer electronics product must have three buttons : power on, power off, and play. With an extra panel of six to ten buttons for those more technically inclined (stop, pause, repeat, mark, skip,..).
4. We should get rid of those funny characters, the ghastly @\/*. , do not forget the dreaded
5. And remember : a button on a mouse is a button too many. The wheel is OK though, kind of sexy.
6. Too many choices will only confuse a user : make the pages more readable, enlarge fonts, remove superfluous links.
7. What do you mean by 'computers are not only for Web browsing'?
8. Multimedia content, now we're getting somewhere. The future of computers is Multimedia!! Of course!!
9. Dialup/ADSL is too confusing for the user. Cable is best.
10. Put everything in one box. now why the hell do we need the 'Monitor' and the 'Printer' when we already bought the 'Computer'???
11. Label it not Computer, because computing is frustrating. Label it something sweeter, shorter
For the people who seem to think that 300$ pc won't be enough:
Most of users of pc buy it for mainly the word-processing/ checking e-mails and at most download songs (and may be to see porn..). A decent pc with 1.5MHz celeron processor with 256 MB DDR RAM and 400MHz FSB should be enough for doing all these chores.
If you want to play games..get a XBOX or PS2.
If you want to tape your shows..use Tivo or a DVR.
- Sh!t
Take the user's brains out and everybody wins.
This is an OTA HDTV set top box. It's basically my TV.
HDTV without cable or satellite? Wow, who would have thought of that?
There's a RS-232 port in back. If one needs to update the firmware, one connects a serial cable to a computer, and runs a firmware download program.
A good many high end audio manufacturers are also incorporating software upgradeability into their offerings. One manufacturer (Onkyo), even has a hardware upgradable receiver-- the NR-1000. Want to add a couple of HDMI ports? Just pop in an expansion card.
It seems nobody here stopped to mention this yet, but it occurs to me that the big reason we've reached this "milestone" is thanks to slave labor!
The PC market has been depressed for a long time now. That new Dell PC with the latest generation of CPU and 512MB of RAM standard shouldn't really be selling for only $399.95. It only does because they can get Chinese workers to assemble the things for them for pennies per day.
And this carries over to ALL aspects of that PC, including the plastic molding process that makes the case! (A while back, I looked into getting a case made for a prototype product we were thiking of marketing. While there a a number of businesses in the U.S. that will do the injection molding process - they practically *all* informed me that I'd be wise to have the mass production of the end-result done in China or Taiwan. They simply couldn't compete at all on price for quantities. It seems they do most of their business helping someone get the very first sample done, and then selling you the molds that it was made with.)
I know many people say "So what? It's a global economy now!" and all that... But I'm not sure we can really preach and claim to be about such things as "freedom" or "individual rights" while letting our own economy slowly collapse. The U.S. doesn't seem like we export any technology anymore! (Heck, what do we export lately other than a lot of our jobs?!)
Being very much a "free market" proponent, it's almost hard to admit this. But right now, we're just not working on the same "playing field". I think the large nations of the world are going to have to get together and agree to add some steep tarriffs to goods imported from 3rd. world countries (and anyone using what amounts to slave labor practices to build their products).
Actually, all they'd have to do is make $TAX_SOFTWARE use Apple X11, and bundle some type of toolkit.. Shit, just use JAVA, for pete's sake... Tax software isn't exactly taxing the CPU or anything nowadays.
15 years ago, you payed more than a thousand dollars to run a couple office programs. No one in their right mind would pay that much today. I have an AMD ~500 mgz chip computer with ~300 mgs RAM that can run Windows 2000 and Office 2000 quickly. I only run into problems when I browse to ESPN.com, and then only because the hard drive is a little slow. You can get a much better computer for $300 today.
/. user, but I think I'm pretty close to the average user.
More importantly, a $300 computer can play CDs, 3d computer games, surf the internet, run Windows XP, Office XP and download and runs thousands of open-source applications with a lousy $30-a-month broadband account. Your thousands of dollars computer from 1990 can't even come close to that functionality, and we all know that.
So unless you're playing bleeding edge 'Half-Life 2', you're not spending more than $700 or so on a computer? What's the point? I spent that on my laptop, and I've barely used these major features: Microsoft Works, the CD burner, the DVD player, the M$ Media Player. 99% of the time, I surf wirelessly on my couch, and that's why I bought it (and my wireless router) 3 months ago. That's pretty much everyone's core use for PCs now. Unless you're at work, you're online and on email. Even there, it's mostly what I do.
Of course, maybe I'm no average
Their images don't load on my PC here at work. (But it works fine in IE and on in Firefox on my macs at home.)
Got any hints?
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I got my employers to buy me a mac mini for evaluation purposes. The idea was to put the code developers on native Xwindows instead installing Xservers on Windows XP systems.
You can't do anything meaningful with a mac mini until you quadruple the memory, was what I found. Once you do that (and buy keyboard/mouse/monitor) the mac mini costs about twice what a comparable PC costs.
At the prices we're talking about, though, twice as much is not a big deal if you really want the Mac interface. Some people prefer it, so they will pay $300 extra for it...
Any refunds on old PC?
With regards to the laptop, that is user error, the cleaning person for spilling stuff into it, and yours for leaving it out on a table where this could happen.
The computer didn't pour stuff into itself after all.
I don't think any room my computers have ever been in could be described as a "clean room".
In any sense of the word.
Maybe the reason my computers work so well in the dust is that they can't tell the difference between dust clogging them up and the normal flow of dust through the fans.
No, the PC will never catch up with the mobile phone.
That I can type a lot faster than I can write with pencil/paper. This can come in handy in college environments Last semester I was taking notes for a deaf student, because I was doing them electronically, it was easy for me to copy them to multiple people via email. If I hadn't had a laptop, my own notes would have been of much lower quality, and I would not have been able to provide notes to others.
GQ-7000 (Fry's cheapy brand)
:)
Pentium 3.0.
motherboard video
Generic motherboard, case.
Speakers, mouse, keyboard.
DVD burner. 4.7 gig dual standard.
256mb ram.
--- I plugged in my home network cable and turned it on.
It started up and immediately worked.
I could see all other computers on my network.
I put in DVD's and they played.
I could burn DVD's.
The neighbors 3 blocks over called to complain about the noise.
--- Since then, I've made the following upgrades.
1) replaced the ram with a stick of 512mb mushkin ($29).
2) Installed two silent fans ($9 and $12). One replaced the noisy fan that was screwed to the heatsink- I kept the original heat sink.
3) New video card (but the 9250 is NOT dx9 like it says on the box so it's going back).
---
Out of the box, the GQ-7000 is a noisy good computer for playing, burning dvds, browsing the internet, and playing games that do not need heavy video performance. It is NOT suitable for modern games.
---
With MINOR upgrades ($29+$21+~$169), you have a very quiet, 3.0ghz computer with a 1 generation old (geo6600 or similar ati) graphics. Furthermore, you don't have to install the OS and you have a restore CD to quickly reinstall the OS later.
---
$300 computers are usually celeron/semprons in my experience and too far back. But at $400, you can get last year's state of the art performance without overclockiing.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
There are some things that really help.
Yeah, right.
My first computer, ever, cost $150. It was only a 1 year old model and it only cost $300 on the day it was initially released in 1982. Thats right, it was a Commodore VIC-20. It had a built in BASIC compiler, 16 colors (when $1,000 computers still used monochrome), and it even had 3 voice sound when $1,000 computers sometimes couldn't even go "beep". It was light-years ahead of the competition, except for its lack of RAM (only 5K). However it was expandable to 32K for less than $100 while the $1,000 computers only came with 16K and were sometimes not even expandable at all.
I call bull on this story because it is FAR from the first time that a sub-$300 computer that is on-par with more expensive computers has been released.
... and in the DRM, bind them.
"My alternative: turn on, type URL of site. (GASP! Sounds like a "hard to use" CLI!!)"
If you're going to turn this into a GUI vs. CLI argument then by all means use the console browser. You want to go back to the previous page, type "b a c k". Gee I wonder what a web site would look like with pictures?
Do all the *pic & shoot* selections of programs NEED to be universal? That point doesnt' matter, as long as people CAN pick and choose their programs!
M$ doesn't have a *universal* way of doing this (ie you need to select links, use rar, zip, arc, or sort through mazes of web sites (links) to install stuff all the time (just like linux).
Maybe what you *mean* is you want linux to select programs for the average joe?
Either way, yast, mandy, synaptic and apt-get are about as thorough a programs you are going to get, and actually surpass much of the software(install progs) written for microsof.
AHHND the fact that there ARE more installation-program choices, gives people (linux) more ability to contour their os to their liking (try that with ms, right?) :)
I will gladly loose all of life's battles.. in order to win the war..
You should have contacted the RIAA, he was probably a pirate.
With an attitude like that, i'm surprised m$ will EVEN have you in *their* community!!
(dont' worry, i don't expect you to respond!)
I will gladly loose all of life's battles.. in order to win the war..
But the Wall Street Journal won't tell you that, would they? Would they really?
I JUST-REALIZED knoppix, as gooood as it is..IS really designed as a swiss-army-knife, or to show-off to people how qool linux is.
JUST because I figured out how to install knoppix (most any flavor will due), didn't mean that I was doing the *smart thing*.
Knoppix (almost always)does not fair-well on a *regular* hd install... period.
It's *OK*, buhhht, there are almost ALWAYS problems that need 2 b nailed down.
Funny, it took me about a YEAR to figure this out!
Now, I either just install Debian PROPER, slack or some other *pure* linux, and then tweak it *once-and-for-all, minus the problems that come with *Live CD* installs to hd's. :)
I will gladly loose all of life's battles.. in order to win the war..
" Microsoft, for one, seems to be in no particular hurry to cut the price of Windows. Ten years ago, an upgrade version of Windows 95, then fresh from the labs in Redmond, Wash., was being sold in most stores for $89.95. If you shop online for Windows XP Home, the third-generation successor to Windows 95, you'll find it in the same ballpark. Ditto with Microsoft Office, which includes Word, Excel and the like. The high-end version of Office 97, which was introduced eight years ago, went for $499; the most recent Office had the same price when it came out in 2003."
from the view of creating a Linux/Mac version of software, problem with Java is you have to make the user install it, and that they get right version of JRE. Java isn't write once run anywhere, it's write once, make the user do some potentially painful setup/config which might screw up other JVM and Java apps they have running already (and maybe even screw their browser if they click the right install option), and hopefully run. As for X11, it's just GUI, there's a backend that needs to be there.
You are saying that because the only program that is useful out-of-the-box with xp, IE is *easy* to use.
Yea, it's *easy* to get use(d) to haveing spyware and viruses gallor!!
ANYONE who claims the m$ commie gimic called xp is *easy*, is SIMPLY a *SIMPLETON*.
Linux comes with ooodles of programs that are not only FREE, but are advanced enough for all types of professionals to use.... SOOOO, why don't you go back to your copy of wordpad or m$ works and try to come up with a cohesive responce next time? :)
--(Dont' worry, I don't expect a responce)
I will gladly loose all of life's battles.. in order to win the war..
Why?
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
THATS the difference between m$, and the unix communities.. it's a *CULTURE* thing MAHHN!!
I will gladly loose all of life's battles.. in order to win the war..
"Great Value" brand from Frys... Had Linspire on it. Didn't suck, much to my surprise.
For most users web/e-mail/office use, that should be more than enough...
unless you want to do anything else, then there's the near vertical learing curve to configuring a Debian based system.
(Linspires tools help minimize that, but I'm sorry, but apt-get isn't "all that".)
Worked fine for the hour or so I played with Linspire, and works fine for many months with Mandrake on it.
I think the "news" in this article is that you can now get $300 with Dell et al including the Windows tax. (IIRC, I've seen such sytems for ~ 6 months advertized..)
And when it's $300 it's pretty much at the low end of the pricing curve.
It's taken years for PCs to drop enough - sadly, laptops aren't quite there yet, but may be in a couple of years.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
(EI runs on linux under wine)
I will gladly loose all of life's battles.. in order to win the war..
http://www.apple.com/environment/summary.html
Try and do that under Windows!!
(I meant IE of course).
I will gladly loose all of life's battles.. in order to win the war..
Whats the advantage to a laptop for study? Are you intending them to use it in class?
Free Wi-Fi across the entire UW campus, the whole University District commercial area, and in Fremont, that's why.
Bandwidth has a price - and it's $0.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Windows always gives you an option menu if you right-click-drag folders around. The default action is bolded.
I find the opposite. My mother, who is a complete technophobe, was perfectly able to set her old video recorder. It took her a few tries to learn, but she learnt it. You used the buttons on the recorder to do it, and the interface *made sense*. It was purpose built, dedicated solely to the problem of using a video. I found it easier to use too. She has a new one with onscreen menu things and can't use it, even though it has videoplus and the old one didn't. She relies on my dad, or if she's in just presses record on the remote when the program's starting and stop at the end of it. It's far harder to use, because the interface makes less sense. Learning another interface is a lot easier than learning to use something with an interface that doesn't fit.
I am trolling
Now that's the dumbest thing I've heard today, especially for software that commands less than 10% of the market. Give me a break.
Actually it isn't dumb--it is completely true. You alluded to one of the main reasons some sites are still broser-specific--they have decided that the cost of changing their legacy, non-compliant code is more than the cost of lost potential business from ten percent of the market. In essence, they in fact do NOT want your business because they have deemed you do not have enough to offer them as a customer for the perceived effort it takes to cater to your needs.
Weather.com has worked fine in all production versions of Firefox. Of course your theory that sites (other than MS-owned) would "deliberatly" write code to break a browser is downright asinine. WTF would they do that?
I too am puzzled about the original poster's experience with weather.com--perhaps it is becasue he uses an old release, or maybe it is the presence or lack of certain plug-ins, or an overall configuration problem. It doesn't mean you have to be insulting. As far as his "asinine" theory goes, it has been proven to happen. In some cases it is sneaky, and in other cases it is very deliberate (a stupid move IMHO, where a site sniffs your broswer and displays a "sorry you aren't running IE--buhbye" page).
Broser sabotage is done to compel users to another browser, either because (as in the case I refence here) said company has a vested interest in the success of a specific browser, or (in the case of a lot of intranet/private sites) tech support wants to ensure a homogenous client operating environment.
Seriously, remove your lips from the crack pipe every once in a while and get a grip on reality.
Seriously, remove the cactus from your rectum and learn to relax...you might find a little insight in what people say, even when it doesn't seem to make sense.
And word to the shortsighted designers out there who STILL make public sites that break standards and rely on platform-specific behaviour: you are doing a disservice to all who use the internet. It doesn't matter if a new PC is $3000, $300 or $30, if it requires more care and feeding than an exotic pet and spftware does not behave with a reasonable degree of consistency from one machine to the next, then PCs will NEVER reach their portential. Consumers do not need a monopoly, but they DO need software developers of all stripes to play by the same rules (USE THE STANDARDS PEOPLE!).
Also, don't count on MS and IE being dominant forever--the machines on the leading edge of the ultra-low-cost market have Linux factory-installed, and even if some form of IE remains the dominant browser, MS has shifted efforts to security at the expense of compatibility (it had to becasue its platform has been flawed from the start). I expect that IE7 or possibly whatever the equivalent of IE8 will be will break more than a few IE6 sites just like XP SP2 broke a number of applications.
Compare that with the VIC-20, which cost about $400 in 1981 (with 64k of memory).
The VIC-20, of which I was a proud owner, had a MASSIVE 3.5k of available memory. I even had the daughter board with the big (think 4 DDRs stacked vertically) memory expansions, of 16 and 8K, to give me a RIDICULOUS 27.5K of memory.
64K was the Commodore 64, but that was just excessive, they even brought out a 128K version.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
This article seems to be just adding to the m$ fud, when it implies that computers are not easier to use than 10 years ago.
AHHND, even if so, who still has nearly 100 % of the desktop market?
The more I investigate and use linux (and other unix brands), the more I see where *Choice* is such a benefit, not only to my computer/work/study needs.. but in *EASE* of use.
For instance, I JUST realized (after about a year of fumbling around) that Knoppix was very well designed.. but for just two things-- a swiss army knife, and to show off to your friends/ colleagues how qoool linux was.
BUT if you figure out how to install it to hard-disk, you better be prepared to do alot of tweaking possibly. After all it is a LIVE-CD, not an install disk!
Well, if a nerd like me can take soooo long to figure out something so basic, imagine the poor average joe!
But learning is good and an inportant part of getting to the point were you need to.
The fact that we can do so much more with computers, and faster, says tons about how easier things are today than 10 years ago, when you couldn't do most of the stuff we can today (InterNet, clustering, video editing for the common man, pvr, home networking, high-speed, satellite internet, etc, etc).
The continued growth of *different* linux distros, is the most positive thing to come about because it *allows* us to find exactly what we want, as many different distros we want, whenever we want! AHHHND, we can squeeze as many as these different copies of linux (unices) that will fit on our hard disk-- at one time!
Maybe what the poster/author of the article *meant* waz.. As far as the *norm* is concerned (ie m$), things are relatively not much better than 10 years ago.
BUHHHT even here I'll have to respectfully disagree, because *i'll be darned*, I still believe xp is much LESS intuitive than 3.1!! ;)
-- :) HAVE A NICE DAY!!
I will gladly loose all of life's battles.. in order to win the war..
Really, what does "fully Loaded" mean?
256MB of memory and a 40 GB drive isn't that loaded to me.
You're right; Gutenberg isn't good for readability. I've read a few books onscreen, and while I don't mind that much, I'd rather have them in dead-tree.
That said, Gutenberg has a much larger selection than Wal-Mart. (Not to mention that the Wal-Mart books are sold for more like $6 to $11.) Some of their 16,000+ books are things like "a million digits of Pi" or "an electronic-speech version of some popular book", but some of them certainly aren't. The "stuff that wouldn't be worth printing in the traditional way", as you say.
To do some testing-out, I downloaded Kinko's stupid 10MB tool to get some pricing information. I picked a random but popular etext (1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue by Francis Grose)... and discovered that getting plain pages printed at Kinko's is grotesquely expensive. Okay, let's say you're a school and you own a printer. Let's say you own a duplexing printer, even. Paper is as cheap as $25/5000, so a 350-page book printed on both sides of the page would actually use about eighty-eight cents of paper. Toner runs something like $30/5000 sheets' worth, so the total materials cost would be about $1.90.
Binding at Kinko's runs something like five bucks for spiral-bind.
Pfah. Well, who knows. It could conceivably be worth the price at some point. Maybe if the pages were chopped in half to make the book more paperback-shaped.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Besides not crashing Firefox, besides being (typically) more up-to-date on the info, besides being quite well done, besides not having adverts, it is something we (in the US) all have paid for already.
Well, unless your parents are counting you as an exemption, still
Forget $300, today Dell has a PC for only $200 with free shipping. http://www.dealcatcher.com/index.asp?v=8&m=610&c=5 5049&o=1
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Excellent, informative post. Would read again!
'Your brain is God.' -- Dr. Timothy Leary
And what import does "learning" have in the situation? Sometimes there is something challenging out there that is accessible to many people and hence the collective learns something in the process. Not bad, but....
Maybe I am a bit of a pedant or trivia-monger. I should be more reasonable, so I will state a more defendable position: I believe in making things more simple until there is no more complexity for complexity's sake . And you can't claim that computers are at that point yet.
I know that even a word processor requires more than operating a TV, but the ideal should hold and be a driving force for technological innovation everywhere from hardware to user interfaces. And the journalist isn't necessarily saying that a computer should be as easy to use as a TV, but that a computer is still not "remotely as easy" to use as other consumer electronics. There is a lot of ground in between computers and consumer electronics that you might want to explore before you jump on someone for suggesting that computers have plenty of room for improvement.
To wit, there is no overall benifit to society to have an isolated class of computer technicians, where the knowledge required to be a part of that class is due to arbitrary human constructs controlled by that class of computer technicians. Maybe that's how a lot in /.-land make a living, but I'm saying that many such jobs are not necessary or inherently beneficial. Take away the arbitrary human-created complexity, and -poof- many jobs disappear (in the meantime, keep up the good work, though!). So it is a sacred cow, and I do not apologize for attacking it and I encourage more journalists to take up the pen to fight it.
A simple example: one can see how this relates to the lack of standards, whereby necessity and income are direct results from the arbitrary and unique complexities built into a system.
So your reference to the "underdeveloped journalistic cerebrum" I think is not justified. The TRUTH, I believe, is that we haven't gotten rid of all unnecessary complexity yet.
Grrah. And, of course, a few minutes later, Slashdot posts a front page story about printing on demand.
Too bad I can't figure out what the pricing is for these places. They seem not to post it on their websites. Any idea how much these cost, especially if you pick them up and don't have to pay shipping?
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
espo
Arn't serious linux users USED to tinkering with these things? I mean, i'm a realist... No, Joe Somebody couldn't do it, but he should have the Mac, not the Linux.
The problem is, most people don't know how to use a car. Mercedes has simplified the starting procedure to the point that you put your keychain in a socket and push a button. After that you push one pedal to go, one pedal to stop. Most people are completely oblivious to what the tachometer does, nor do they care. I'd guess 30% of the population could use a manual transmission car if it were an emergency. Most car makers have removed, or dumbed down all of the diagnostic readouts on the car's condition. Water temp, oil temp & pressure, battery voltage and more are often not included at all. When they are included, they're represented with an "idiot light" that says "service vechicle immediately". When there is a gauge with needle, it's electronically controlled so that unless it's sensing extremes, the needle will stay in the very middle. This is well documented on mustangs, as the oil pressure needle doesn't rise or fall as the engine spins up or down (as it should), it simply stays in the middle because people were bringing the car in, worried about that. Now your oil pressure has to drop below lubricating levels for the needle to move from the middle.
Computers will always be a mystery to some people. Until there is a four icon menu system (Word processor, internet, email, power) with fisher price simplicity, the vast majority of people will continue to be afraid to use computers.
moox. for a new generation.
Ladies, Gentlemen,
Only on
I'm with you that HTTP isn't the right tool for the job. I personally still loathe sending files around via email. But people don't care. And there's no reason they should have to. The Internet is about interoperation, remember? We might not like the implications, (I know I don't), but it still is the goal we all are trying to accomplish, for whatever reason. (I'm in it for the fame, the coke and the whores, of course, but YMMV. And BTW, I like that guy's propeller hat.)
But, Ladies and Gentlemen, I digress.
Let's take the OP's example of the photo gallery sites. Being a long-time web application programmer, I always wonder why you have to jump through hoops to let people upload folders and folders of stuff (and to display an accurate progress bar). Yes, I know how to do it and we use self-written PHP classes for that. That's not the point. The point is that there is no point in forcing people to use (or worse, install) another piece of software just because the stupid shits who write those browsers just won't implement *basic* file selection dialogs. I mean in Windows you have a fully capable file browser (copy, rename, delete, etc.) on any open dialog except for that of the Web browser. WTF? It's trivial to implement what to do with the input of such a file open dialog, yet it's not done. Maybe it's just too hard to code up a HTTP upload for more than one file. You can do it with a few lines of PHP, but maybe it's impossible to code up in C++ or whatever people use these days, what do I know.
Maybe I'm just putting in that sarcasm because just today I once again had to explain to a client why people just can't upload a bunch of point-of-sale material using "the normal Windows file open thingy" but have to disable the pop-up blocking for our site so that our 'faked' upload dialog could appear. Because, of course, our 'dialog' should not be in the browser window, but "just like any other open thingy in Windows". It went like this:
(If you wonder why I didn't go
Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk?
Because it can and it is supposed to do a lot of stuff. If you want to eat toast, get a toaster and some bread. If you want to browse web, get webTV (does it still exist?) and learn to use mouse and keyboard. If you want to browse, play games, word process, financial planning, edit digital photos/videos and then burn on DVDs, oh maybe some nice fading effects between scenes and btw get some nice background music but just that 2 minutes... How is it suppose to be easy to use if one intends to use it for many many things?
Now days a GOOD computer still costs that much.
---- "Excuse me. Where's the children's gun section?"
not though, but thou. GOT IT?
Well then, GET IT.
Love the Linux.
Local Linux geeks where I live(D) are the biggest MF'ing PITA people I have ever met from here to mars.
Let's keep it corporate, okay?
Umm... not really. My point was, businesses that one would assume are mass producing their products are reduced to doing nothing but helping someone prepare an overseas competitor to kick their butt at doing their job.
The prototyping and molds could be done overseas too, and at a much lower cost - *except*, it's still worth paying more to have someone you can easily contact, much closer to home, if you're working out glitches in the design. (It's not that often they get the mold done for you perfectly on the very first try.)