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RM> I was buying decent used cars cheaper than the cheapest computers back
RM> in those years so I think it was a little worse at that time, although
RM> I'm probably thinking more the mid to late 80's when I first got into
RM> them..

KW>I always felt like market forces drove computers to certain price
  >points. You'd have a basic PC for $500, a high-end PC for twice that,
  >and add on more for a gaming PC. As PCs got faster/better, the prices
  >stayed the same but the power increased.

Market does pretty much control the price of everything..
I think the manufacturing cost difference between those types of
computers though is not near as much as the pricing suggests.

Supply and demand has a big impact, plus people wanting the newest,
fastest, coolest gaming system and being willing to pay a premium
to be the first on their block to have one. That's much like whan
a new Apple Phone comes out and people are paying almost $3000 for
one, but a year later they are probably half that price, and I doubt
Apple is losing any money on them then..

KW>Chromebooks changed the landscape quite a bit, driving the low-end down.

The main thing about Chromebooks is you don't pay the high fee that
Microsoft charges for the Windows OS.. By that I mean that the price
difference is a software issue rather than a hardware issue.

Along those lines though.. My newest Laptop, not the one I use very
much, I bought on a year end sale where it was so cheap I couldn't
resist having it as a backup for when my Windows 7 Laptop either
dies or the OS gets too old to function well.. the same reason I
had this Windows 7 computer sitting for some time waiting for my
old Windows 98 system to become mostly unusable.

In both of those cases I bought them for quite a bit less than half
the price they were selling for when 'new'..

My other advantage is I don't need high end systems. I mostly run
old software (games and such) and do simpler things online so I
don't need super fast systems with tons of RAM.. Those computers
start off cheap and seem to drop even more than others later.

---
 * SLMR Rob  * I get enough exercise pushing my luck
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