Remain Calm Despite
Tempting Computer Prices
By
Bryan D. Applegate
Everyone has seen the drastic drop in
computer prices in the past seven to eight months.
Large and small companies alike are luring you and your buddies
in with lower-than-ever prices and best-ever rebates and
incentives. You must ask this: Why is
this happening?
Three years ago, some important person predicted the arrival
of a one hundred dollar computer; is this it? No. With all the
SEC lawsuits and investigations, are companies scared to make
money and have now decided to lose money just for giggles? No.
What we're seeing until about Q2 2006 is a massive,
industry-wide yard sale.
Thankfully, this yard sale is not filled with junk. In many
cases, you can find great computers and peripherals for about
one-third their original prices. But there is a catch. As good
as some of this stuff is, there's superior stuff on the way and
the yard sales are companies doing Spring Cleaning. Retailers
just can't put the new stuff next to the old stuff on their
shelves... Eating the cost is smarter business for them.
Massive changes to computers and their physical guts haven't
occurred for about five years. From 1993 to 1999, it really was
a frustrating affair as guts and pin-configurations changed
almost every two months. Intel tried this, Intel tried that, RAM
was this way, then it was that way and your new computer in 1995
was seriously outdated in 1996.
In 2000, Intel sat on Pentium merely increasing its power and
RAM squatted on a standard that allowed us all to upgrade our
2000 computers even four years later with little fuss. That lack
of change helped us forget “the old days.” Now, revolution is
coming in fits and starts once again. RAM is changing
physically, video cards are finally changing after almost a
decade, processors are blasting into space physically and
mathematically in the way they compute.
Upgrades of whatever, wonderful computer you buy today for
cheap will simply be physically impossible. We are at the end of
a long-time era. The birth of the next-era stuff will have
pitfalls and growing pains – but it will be the NEXT-ERA
regardless. If you buy now, prepare to be depressed in March
2006.
Intel doesn't make a 64-bit processor yet; it keeps breaking
itself in testing. Programs and software are shifting to 64-bit
requirements. AGP video cards have been locked at 8X speeds
where their Next-Era prodigy can already boast four times the
bandwidth (far more potential), but currently similar speeds
i.e. 'growing pains', and today's RAM burns to a crisp when
pushed to 1 Gigahertz speeds where tomorrow's RAM is already
physically prepared for the bigger heat and numbers in speed.
Finally, ever bought a Microsoft Windows disk?
At $400 a pop for full versions, that's nearly buying half
the computer again. Next-Era machines will have XP's successor,
“Vista”, built in. Vista's release has been kindly delayed to
allow the Spring Cleaning. If you deserve to be frustrated and
short-changed, run out and buy a new computer right now. If you
game, are a power user, enjoy full functionality and/or don't
want a pet dinosaur taking up four cubic feet of desk space, you
are super-duper well-advised to remain calm and stay seated
until Q2 2006 when Microsoft Vista springs into existence
announcing that the yard sale is over.
Bryan tutors happily and regularly with
Dinarius, Inc.
making sure that people know what they need to know to be
better. More free lessons and advice can be found at
Dinarius.com
Article Source:
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