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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
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.
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.
Yup. And then pay for techs to handle the "omg wtf, why won't this page load. U are the sux0r!".
I switched my folks over to Firefox, and this is what I got. Ended up putting the IE icon back on their desktop. Told them I will not clean spyware any more.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
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.
"Of course they're harder to use!"
I don't think the difference is as big as most people assume. Yes, OSs are huge, complicated and amazingly difficult to master, but the average person has no need of mastery. When you look at what the average person does, it's actually fairly easy.
-turn on, click on web browser, type URL of favorite site.
-turn on, insert disc, hit next, next, next, finished, use newly installed software.
-turn on, insert disc, hit next, next, next, finished, plug in USB hardware, use new hardware.
Have you ever tried to dial-in surround sound? Have you ever tried to make your TV, surround sound reciever, cable/sat box, and DVD player all work well using a single remote control? Have you ever tried to watch a TV, then switch to DVD using all of the remote controls that hadn't been unified into a single one?
Yes, OSs are complicated. Consumer electronics is too.
TW
TW
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!
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.
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
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?
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.
I switched my folks over to Firefox, and this is what I got.
As did I... And when they made that same complaint (somewhat more eloquently phrased), I explained that pages not loading (or even crashing their browser) meant, in no uncertain terms, that the owner of that site didn't want their business.
Problem solved.
As an aside - I've noticed that quite a few "major" sites DELIBERATELY crash Firefox... Weather.com, as the example I notice most often (since I actually visit it regularly)... I use the User Agent Switcher extension, and if I set it to MSIE (or even to no user agent at all), such sites work just fine. If I set it to FF or Moz - Bam!, dead browser.
I mean, not taking the effort to make a site compatible, I can understand - But to actually exert effort to deliberately break some browsers? You'd almost think such actions must violate some law...
I'm quite sure that Microsoft wouldn't love anything more than being able to enforce such things but I doubt that this is the main issue why oems don't do it.
The main issue is cost. Most (read all) businesses aren't about ideology. Why would they go through the trouble to disable some of windows and install Openoffice and firefox? If for example real was paying them to isntall their play, then I could understand but going through the trouble to install 3rd party software is not on the oem's agenda.
You would only be exchanging virus and spyware support calls for 'why can't I open this website' 'Why doesn't this activeX work on my 'internet'', 'why doesn't that doc sent to me by a friend look the same on my computer' kind of calls.
Seeing how they treat most of the virus/spyware problems (reinstall). I say they would prefer them to the alternative.
Oh man, you've been in that coma for a while.
Yeah, right.
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.
Have you looked at console's recently? I have quite a lot of settings in my PS2. Sure, playing a game is easy, provided you plug your provided cord into the front panel jack. But wait, what if you:
Have HDTV?
Want to use surround sound?
Want to watch DVDs on the console?
Want to play online?
Don't want cords in the middle of the room?
Want to use more than one console?
Want to use a DVR and a console?
Want to use a DVD, DVR, VCR and cable box with the console?
As it turns out, as single entities consumer electronics are easier. But as soon as you want to hook them up with all your other goodies, they get really complicated, really fast. Want to go through a little thought experiment? How's this:
Experiment #1:
You buy a 27" standard definition (regular) TV and a PS2 for your 16 year old daughter. You give her the boxes, unopened, and have her set them up in her room by herself. Is she successful? Great. My daughter would do just fine too. But wait, there's more.
Experiment #2:
You buy a 27" HDTV and a PS2 for your 16 year old daughter. You also get her an HDTV-ready cable box. You get her surround speakers. You get her a surround reciever. You get her a DVD-recorder. You get her a Tivo. You give her all these things brand new and in their boxes and you send her to her room to set them up.
Is she successful? Well, it depends on how you define success. She might have plugged them all in, but she's already missing a bunch of cables. She might not even be able to hook up the speakers, much less have surround sound for the PS2.
Let's say she bought some cables and eventually got everything working. You go to look at her system and find:
-The picture is fuzzy because she used composite video cables. You ask her about component and she gives you a blank stare.
-She has 5 different remote controls and can barely keep track of them.
-There are wires all over the floor because of the surround sound.
-The sound is bad because she's used zip-ties to bundle all the cords, including the power, all the RCAs and the speaker wire. She just accepts it and figures she'll have to buy better speakers later on to improve her sound.
-She has at least a dozen manual-looking thing. Some are just "don't use your toaster in the bathtub" type warnings, but she doesn't know the difference. All she knows is she has more than 200 pages worth of stuff to read if she wants a better understanding of her equipment.
As I said, one console is easy. But in the real world when you want to use more than one device (the equipment I listed is very realistic) Consumer Electronics, as a whole, are not easy at all.
TW
My mother and favorite aunt are both teachers, I was a teacher before I was an engineer, and I have unending respect for the majority of the profession... but the level of technological expertise approaches zero. Forget firefox, the "power user" at my Aunt's school uses IE and laughs at the people stuck with AOL's browswer or a six year old Netscape-for-macs client. These are the folks who need to be on the ball if Bobby's Electronic Notebook eats his test fourty-five minutes into the period... do you see that happening?
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.