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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.
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).
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
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
"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!
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
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 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.
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?
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.
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...
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.
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.
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
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).
---
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.