Yeah, perhaps when apple actually does have a $500 computer on the market, they'll make that cheaper.
Either way, its still not a bad price for a brand new computer. Not that I advocate buying a dell, I'm just saying whats out there for people who don't know much about computers and are going out looking for the first time.
The way the world is going, "Sub-$500" is slowly edging its way away from the "economy class" and becoming more of the middle line for PCs. Just look at Dell, they are selling brand new Celeron 2.4ghz machines
with
a monitor for $499. On ebay you can find some pretty nice used machines for under $100.
Over $1000 these days is where you can find some really nice machines. But $1000 is no longer the entry point. If you were someone buying your first computer, would you want to plunge right in to a $1000+ Macintosh, or go for a sub $500 PC?
It took long enough for Apple to see this, but they would have to be stupid to ignore it forever. It makes perfect sense to offer an entry point into Apple at the sub-$500 mark. And with the massive amount of cashflow they are getting from the overpriced iPod, they can certainly afford to cut their margins a bit on the low end in order to get the "apple" brand into the hands of the PC using public.
I never really pay much attention to apples, but I love competition in the marketplace, so I hope this is true.
Buy what you like, no need to bash the other guys system. Nintendo and Sony are heavyweights, you don't need to promote their products for them, they'll still have the same libraries they were planning anyway.
I for one own a DS and I plan to buy a PSP if it ever gets a game I want on it. (Yeah, I'm a 29 year old man who likes playing Super Mario 64 DS, laugh it up)
First it was Atari vs. Coleco, then NES vs. SMS, then Gameboy vs. a ton of other portables, then SNES vs. Genesis, then Playstation vs. N64 vs. Saturn, then Dreamcast just plain fell on its ass, then X-BOX vs. Gamecube vs. PS2, and now this!
If there is one thing that has ever remained constant across ALL of these fights, It does not matter whose hardware is better, whoever has the best software library wins.
In terms of hardware, if I recall correctly:
Coleco > Atari SMS > NES Gamegear, Lynx, and that Turbo Grafx 16 handheld > Gameboy Genesis somewhat > SNES (SNES had better sound and more colors, but Genesis had a better processor) Saturn > N64 !! Playstation Dreamcast = Nice hardware but only like 1 good game and the worlds worst controller design ever. X-BOX > PS2 !! Gamecube
and just for fun:
PSP > DS - Yes the hardware is better for the PSP. Only a Nintendo fanatic will argue otherwise. But as can be demonstrated throughout history. It does not matter whose hardware is better, it matters who has better games. (that, and with portables, battery life is a huge factor)
Say what you want about Intel, but I'm happy to see they are investing $2 billion in an American plant, instead of sending those jobs away. Course, it could be that with the dollar falling they couldn't afford as much in other places... another reason why I think the value of the dollar going down isn't necesarily a bad thing.
Have you ordered from kicktrading before? I might get one of those, I'm getting a DS soon and would like to play some of my original Gameboy games on it.
I have one of those, works great. I bought it for my kid, takes about 4 hours to turn a 30 minute TV show into a 200mb file that it can play.
Also you can "trick" this device into playing Gameboy games as well as NES games. The NES emulation leaves a lot to be desired though since you can only load roms up to 192k and you can't save... but most roms 192k or less have passwords anyway.
If you want to do this for real though get a Flash2Advance card, then you can do all KINDS of neat GBA tricks.
Yeah but for those stats they tested it on a P4 3.6Ghz with Corsair ram and a good mobo with an Audigy card in it.
Anyone who puts this cheap ass video card in a system like that is only crippling their system. Heck, that CPU alone retails for $450. I would rather save money and buy a slightly cheaper CPU and then get a better video card.
If you match this card up with what it's meant to be paired with, IE a value CPU, then it really is a piece of crap and you'd be better off getting a cheap Geforce 4 off Ebay.
When the lawsuit story broke, just for fun I added "geico" to my list of adwords. I put it on as 0.05 per click.
Guess what, even then my ad was placing 2nd or 3rd on the list, for a nickel!
If Geico is so bent up about people searching their name finding other competitors, why don't they just pay for some ads on their name themselves. Its not like it costs a mint, and they are rich bastards.
There's this place I found in my neighborhood that has a LOT of movies, books, and CDs, and they let me take them for absolutely nothing... and keep them for a week, sometimes more.
Sure, sometimes I have to wait for things, but hey, the price is right. All I had to do was sign up for a little card that said I promise to bring it back before its due.
FREE!
They call it a "Public Library"... apparently they've been in business for years, but I don't see how. What a funny business model, letting your customers take your stuff home for free... HA HA!
I've never been to the UK so I have no idea what things are like over there. But I used to live in a place here in the US where the nearest police station was half an hour away, and my nearest neighbor was a half mile down the road. If we left the house we didn't bother to lock the door because if someone wanted to rob the house while we were gone, we at least didn't want them to break the door.
Live out somewhere that remote and tell me I should call the police and let them sort it out if a guy breaks in and tries to tie us up and do god knows what.
Incidently, nothing makes a criminal evacuate his bowels faster than the sound of pumping a 12 guage.
Never had to shoot anyone though, thank goodness. Had to shoot animals though, but I suppose the anti-gun crowd thinks I should just try to "reason" with a rabid Raccoon thats trying to attack my dog.
Receptionist: There are some customers here with suggestions on how to improve the service. Boss: Oh boy! Customers! Which customers? Receptionist: Looks like... both of them.
The nintendo DS is so much more sexy because of the MASSIVE game library you can... erm... play on it.
I am not sure about how easily the PSP can be hacked to run your own software (I'm sure eventually someone will figure it out) but for the DS its easy and a lot of things already run... for instance you can put PocketNES on the thing and it runs perfectly (of course, its for GBA, but it works)
And thanks to the forsight of the guy who wrote pocketnes, there's actually a gameboy emulator for the GBA, which means you can play all the Gameboy games on the DS after all.
Not to mention, all the Gamegear and TG16 games... and its only a matter of time before someone comes out with a fully functional SNES and Genesis emulator for this thing.
Its library will be massive... if you have a flash rom anyways.;)
That would be hard to do unless you're rejecting based on the remote IP address... because normally the 553 no user message comes before your data segment of the SMTP transaction, so you're already past that point before you determine if the content of the message is spam.
You know, i've found that the truly wealthy who actually earned their wealth would more than likely shun the idea of spending $300k on a monitor.
Probably most of the people buying this crap are either trust fund babies or lottery winners, in other words, people who have no real idea of the value of money.
A PC with more power has an open OS, meaning anyone with a CD can reboot it to load (or break) whatever they want.
A PC isn't a sealed device, meaning dust, vermin, and all sorts of crap can get in there to gunk up the thing.
A PC has a LOT more moving parts to break. This thing has no CPU fan, how long do you think a CPU fan will last in some of those places, especially really humid ones?
A PC requires a LOT more than 8 Watts to run. 200+ watts is nothing for you or I on our electric systems, but you have to consider your location. In some of these villages where these things are going to be targeted, 200 watts * however many PCs they want to set up will overload the system. You can run 10 of these on 80 watts.
Seriously, from an overall administrative point of view, these things are WAY better than a homebrew thrown together PC. this thing is solid and as close to bulletproof as you can get for under $200.
You would want something like this if you were quite ignorant of computers and only wanted to "Press the button and have it work."
You would want something like this if you lived in a remote area that didn't have good power connectivity and wanted something running on 8 watts, something you could easily generate with oh, I don't know, a small hydrowheel or maybe solar?
You would want something like this if you were a sysadmin who had to deploy thousands of PCs to little podunk villages with a bunch of wannabe hackers who would undoubtably install some crapware causing you to have to spend hours and hours fixing these things to keep them able to send their friends e-mail.
You would want something like this if you're a third world country trying to bring your population into the 21st century.
You probably wouldn't want something like this if you're an Geek from a modern country who has grown up hacking their own PC and can afford to purchase thousands of dollars worth of hardware a year, and know how to fix things yourself.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, perhaps when apple actually does have a $500 computer on the market, they'll make that cheaper.
Either way, its still not a bad price for a brand new computer. Not that I advocate buying a dell, I'm just saying whats out there for people who don't know much about computers and are going out looking for the first time.
- with
a monitor for $499. On ebay you can find some pretty nice used machines for under $100.Over $1000 these days is where you can find some really nice machines. But $1000 is no longer the entry point. If you were someone buying your first computer, would you want to plunge right in to a $1000+ Macintosh, or go for a sub $500 PC?
It took long enough for Apple to see this, but they would have to be stupid to ignore it forever. It makes perfect sense to offer an entry point into Apple at the sub-$500 mark. And with the massive amount of cashflow they are getting from the overpriced iPod, they can certainly afford to cut their margins a bit on the low end in order to get the "apple" brand into the hands of the PC using public.
I never really pay much attention to apples, but I love competition in the marketplace, so I hope this is true.
Cripes!
Buy what you like, no need to bash the other guys system. Nintendo and Sony are heavyweights, you don't need to promote their products for them, they'll still have the same libraries they were planning anyway.
I for one own a DS and I plan to buy a PSP if it ever gets a game I want on it. (Yeah, I'm a 29 year old man who likes playing Super Mario 64 DS, laugh it up)
First it was Atari vs. Coleco, then NES vs. SMS, then Gameboy vs. a ton of other portables, then SNES vs. Genesis, then Playstation vs. N64 vs. Saturn, then Dreamcast just plain fell on its ass, then X-BOX vs. Gamecube vs. PS2, and now this!
If there is one thing that has ever remained constant across ALL of these fights, It does not matter whose hardware is better, whoever has the best software library wins.
In terms of hardware, if I recall correctly:
Coleco > Atari
SMS > NES
Gamegear, Lynx, and that Turbo Grafx 16 handheld > Gameboy
Genesis somewhat > SNES (SNES had better sound and more colors, but Genesis had a better processor)
Saturn > N64 !! Playstation
Dreamcast = Nice hardware but only like 1 good game and the worlds worst controller design ever.
X-BOX > PS2 !! Gamecube
and just for fun:
PSP > DS - Yes the hardware is better for the PSP. Only a Nintendo fanatic will argue otherwise. But as can be demonstrated throughout history. It does not matter whose hardware is better, it matters who has better games. (that, and with portables, battery life is a huge factor)
Say what you want about Intel, but I'm happy to see they are investing $2 billion in an American plant, instead of sending those jobs away. Course, it could be that with the dollar falling they couldn't afford as much in other places... another reason why I think the value of the dollar going down isn't necesarily a bad thing.
How can UT2k4 be the best sports game?
Sounds like they don't play real sports games at all.
Have you ordered from kicktrading before? I might get one of those, I'm getting a DS soon and would like to play some of my original Gameboy games on it.
ORANGE - having your password be 'password'
YELLOW - downloading the latest paris hilton video
I have one of those, works great. I bought it for my kid, takes about 4 hours to turn a 30 minute TV show into a 200mb file that it can play.
Also you can "trick" this device into playing Gameboy games as well as NES games. The NES emulation leaves a lot to be desired though since you can only load roms up to 192k and you can't save... but most roms 192k or less have passwords anyway.
If you want to do this for real though get a Flash2Advance card, then you can do all KINDS of neat GBA tricks.
Yeah but for those stats they tested it on a P4 3.6Ghz with Corsair ram and a good mobo with an Audigy card in it.
Anyone who puts this cheap ass video card in a system like that is only crippling their system. Heck, that CPU alone retails for $450. I would rather save money and buy a slightly cheaper CPU and then get a better video card.
If you match this card up with what it's meant to be paired with, IE a value CPU, then it really is a piece of crap and you'd be better off getting a cheap Geforce 4 off Ebay.
Hmm, now that you mention it, I believe there were Geico commercials on the last sporting event I watched... talk about a bait and switch. ;)
When the lawsuit story broke, just for fun I added "geico" to my list of adwords. I put it on as 0.05 per click.
Guess what, even then my ad was placing 2nd or 3rd on the list, for a nickel!
If Geico is so bent up about people searching their name finding other competitors, why don't they just pay for some ads on their name themselves. Its not like it costs a mint, and they are rich bastards.
If they want to use the Patriot act to find out that i've been reading PHP manuals, Terry Pratchett and watching Farscape ... so be it.
There's this place I found in my neighborhood that has a LOT of movies, books, and CDs, and they let me take them for absolutely nothing... and keep them for a week, sometimes more.
... apparently they've been in business for years, but I don't see how. What a funny business model, letting your customers take your stuff home for free... HA HA!
Sure, sometimes I have to wait for things, but hey, the price is right. All I had to do was sign up for a little card that said I promise to bring it back before its due.
FREE!
They call it a "Public Library"
Agreed.
I've never been to the UK so I have no idea what things are like over there. But I used to live in a place here in the US where the nearest police station was half an hour away, and my nearest neighbor was a half mile down the road. If we left the house we didn't bother to lock the door because if someone wanted to rob the house while we were gone, we at least didn't want them to break the door.
Live out somewhere that remote and tell me I should call the police and let them sort it out if a guy breaks in and tries to tie us up and do god knows what.
Incidently, nothing makes a criminal evacuate his bowels faster than the sound of pumping a 12 guage.
Never had to shoot anyone though, thank goodness. Had to shoot animals though, but I suppose the anti-gun crowd thinks I should just try to "reason" with a rabid Raccoon thats trying to attack my dog.
Actually the best deterrant against being robbed ...
Big Dogs.
I prefer boxers, because they look mean but are great with kids, but don't let that fool you, if they feel threatened they can get mean.
Receptionist: There are some customers here with suggestions on how to improve the service. ... both of them.
Boss: Oh boy! Customers! Which customers?
Receptionist: Looks like
The nintendo DS is so much more sexy because of the MASSIVE game library you can ... erm... play on it.
... if you have a flash rom anyways. ;)
I am not sure about how easily the PSP can be hacked to run your own software (I'm sure eventually someone will figure it out) but for the DS its easy and a lot of things already run... for instance you can put PocketNES on the thing and it runs perfectly (of course, its for GBA, but it works)
And thanks to the forsight of the guy who wrote pocketnes, there's actually a gameboy emulator for the GBA, which means you can play all the Gameboy games on the DS after all.
Not to mention, all the Gamegear and TG16 games... and its only a matter of time before someone comes out with a fully functional SNES and Genesis emulator for this thing.
Its library will be massive
Cool, I mentioned N in a comment in my previous article... I'm on level 4 after much frustration... good game.
Haha, just downloaded N because it looked like one of the dumber things on that list, but its actually quite fun. Shows me ...
That would be hard to do unless you're rejecting based on the remote IP address... because normally the 553 no user message comes before your data segment of the SMTP transaction, so you're already past that point before you determine if the content of the message is spam.
You know, i've found that the truly wealthy who actually earned their wealth would more than likely shun the idea of spending $300k on a monitor.
Probably most of the people buying this crap are either trust fund babies or lottery winners, in other words, people who have no real idea of the value of money.
Thats obscenely rich.
Well, I haven't seen a Solarlite for sale yet, I tend to reserve judgement on products until I can actually have it in my hands.
But seriously, I actually like the idea of locking down the OS so you can't tamper with it. makes things easier.
See? See? Technology is evil, because we all know only evil electronics could cause this sort of thing...
** slips back into his hottub sipping a margarita **
TCO = Total Cost of Ownership
A PC with more power has an open OS, meaning anyone with a CD can reboot it to load (or break) whatever they want.
A PC isn't a sealed device, meaning dust, vermin, and all sorts of crap can get in there to gunk up the thing.
A PC has a LOT more moving parts to break. This thing has no CPU fan, how long do you think a CPU fan will last in some of those places, especially really humid ones?
A PC requires a LOT more than 8 Watts to run. 200+ watts is nothing for you or I on our electric systems, but you have to consider your location. In some of these villages where these things are going to be targeted, 200 watts * however many PCs they want to set up will overload the system. You can run 10 of these on 80 watts.
Seriously, from an overall administrative point of view, these things are WAY better than a homebrew thrown together PC. this thing is solid and as close to bulletproof as you can get for under $200.
"why would you want something like this?"
You would want something like this if you were quite ignorant of computers and only wanted to "Press the button and have it work."
You would want something like this if you lived in a remote area that didn't have good power connectivity and wanted something running on 8 watts, something you could easily generate with oh, I don't know, a small hydrowheel or maybe solar?
You would want something like this if you were a sysadmin who had to deploy thousands of PCs to little podunk villages with a bunch of wannabe hackers who would undoubtably install some crapware causing you to have to spend hours and hours fixing these things to keep them able to send their friends e-mail.
You would want something like this if you're a third world country trying to bring your population into the 21st century.
You probably wouldn't want something like this if you're an Geek from a modern country who has grown up hacking their own PC and can afford to purchase thousands of dollars worth of hardware a year, and know how to fix things yourself.