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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
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.
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.
*Ducks*
All your
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.
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.
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
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.
Some OEM's TRIED to do this, until MS threatened to never let them sell Windows again... then they stopped.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
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.
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.
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!
"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
...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
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.
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?
I'm getting a vision of my mother calling me up and going off like that - "OMFG! i gav birf 2 u! WTFXOR!!! LOL!11"
Makes me laugh because my mom called me up the other day and, in a triumphant tone, said "Guess what I'm doing? I'm GOOGLING!"
Five minutes later, I was still cracking up, and even now I get a smile.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
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.
once people give it a chance and get to know how it works, they start to get on just fine with it. i've had a similar, if slightly less hysterical, reaction at work, where all but one of my staff are very happy with it. big sell here? the forecast fox extension, god they love it.
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...
Our university bookstore [warning: tacky website] just signed a deal with IBM to buy a bunch of ThinkCentres to sell to the students. Our Support Desk was asked for input on what should be put on the image for each machine. A couple thousand students will now have Firefox installed for them ;) (I'm not sure if we put Thunderbird on there or not)
Well, yeah, but 6 months after you buy it, you can't repurpose your TIVO to balance your checkbook inbetween recording your movies.
To achieve the end you're suggesting, you'd have to lock the pc down and not allow software installation.
IMO, software installation (and de-installation) is the primary cause of serious computer breakage. (Yes, spyware, etc fall into this category).
maybe we should require PC licenses for internet safety.
Maybe we should require civility licenses before allowing people to open their pieholes.
"My God...it's full of trolls!"
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
"Today a lot of people own cars, but they are still not easy to use. People have to train for months and have to pass exams to be able to drive on the road without being a road-hazard."
Now I agree it would be easier to have one big button on the PC called "do what I want you to do", but unfortunately computers lack the psychic abilities to do that.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
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.
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
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
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!)
As much as slashdotters may hate it, ActiveX is the ace up Microsoft's sleeve when it comes to web browsers. Go to any photo sharing site (Ofoto, Snapfish, Yahoo Photos). With FireFox, your only option is to upload one at a time. This is a royal pain in the ass if you have more than 10 photos. Open the same page in IE, and the option to drag and drop entire folders magically appears.
I'm sure there's some way to replicate this functionality in FF, but until mainstream sites take the time to do it, IE isn't going anywhere.
These cheap pc's are nothing but junk.
I have a $450 PC (and that includes monitor and printer) that's currently running Firefox, Thunderbird, Shareaza, iPodder, Copernic, Gaim, Picasa, Folding@Home, Proxomitron, WinRoll, Yahoo Music Engine, Clipomatic, AbiWord, McAfee Firewall, and Norton Antivirus with no slow-down. Why, pray tell, would a top-of-the-line $1000 unit be better?
If you're not a gamer or animator, a cheap PC will do the job. Hell, I know a guy who's still getting by with X-terminal on a 486.
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
This is called Using the Wrong Tool for the Job. If you want to send more than one file at a time, you really need an FTP client, not a web browser. HTTP was never designed for multiple file up/downloads in this way. Ever heard of the Law of Unintended Consequences?
.tar.gz with several pics in it. But I wouldn't expect everyone to get it .....
Being a fully-paid-up Penguin Shagger myself, if I was writing a Web-based photo-sharing application I would just allow you to HTTP-upload a
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
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
I just priced the same dell 2400 here in the UK. It is £279 ($503). Wake me up when they get cheap this side of the pond.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
For the people who seem to think that 300$ 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.
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).
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...
No, the PC will never catch up with the mobile phone.
My wife recently switched from moz to ff and imported everything. She had some problems with several sites until she redid her profile. In the end, iirc, it turned out that she had some problems with an old version of flashblock. Make sure you have 1.3.1 and dont autoupdate it.
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).
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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.
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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.
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$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.
espo
I prefer to look at it as what percentage of the hardware price I have to spend on software. For Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office, that percentage has been increasing steadily and dramatically over the past ten years.