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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 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.
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
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
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
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.
IIRC, the C64 was selling for $179 towards the end of its lifespan.
This is due to the volume of machines Commodore was stamping out. There's a reason everyone seems to have a C=64 in their closet. Commodore sold more than 33 million of the little buggers, more than ANY OTHER computer model ever made, even to this day. The only other machine that even comes close was the Apple II, which sold for 12 years continuously with only minor modifications.
The sad irony is that most books which talk about the home computer revolution in computing history concentrate on Apple/IBM/Microsoft, and conviently forget about the C=64, the home PC which truely changed the world, and one of the most popular machines ever created.
And yes, I still have mine.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Well, Streamload manages to do batch uploads with a Java applet (which still requires full access to the machine - so a similar security risk, though I know Streamload and trust them) which works in Opera just fine, so I would guess it would also work in FireFox.
Personally, I don't use picture sites, so...
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3