Computer Pricing

Back maybe in early high school, I decided to build a new desktop system, and scrapped together enough money to do so. I built what was then a monster of a system: dual 1.4 GHz Athlons, a gig of RAM, and a 40 GB hard drive.

Today, my laptop is faster: Core2Duo 1.833 GHz, 2 GB RAM, and a 60 GB disk at 7200 RPM.

But what interests me most is how cheap things are these days. Looking through this weekend’s CompUSA circular, I’ll point out a few interesting ones:

  • $400 (after a big rebate) buys a laptop with 15.4″ LCD, dual-core Pentium processor, 512 MB RAM (bah), an 80 GB disk, and Vista Home Basic. It’d be a bit of a downgrade for me, but to those who don’t have a relatively new, tricked-out machine, all that, in a laptop, for $400? It’d make a pretty good computer (juts upgrade that RAM!), and it’s only $400. That’s what I’d expect to spend on a peripheral or two.
  • $600 gets you a 17″ notebook, dual cores, 160 GB drive, Vista Home Premium, and a gig of RAM. Now you’ve got a nice machine. For $600.
  • I’m desperately trying to justify to myself a new desktop system: $1,000 buys a quad-core 2.4 GHz processor, 2 GB RAM, a 500 GB disk, a 22″ widescreen monitor, and Vista Home Premium. (With a 500 GB disk, I could say I had Vista and yet really run Linux. *grin*) If you asked me, without having looked at the circular, I’d have told you that such a machine would probably run $3,000 or more. (A printer is apparently also included, although since they scarcely mention it, I don’t have high hopes for it.)

Anyone in the market for a dual 1.4 GHz AthlonMP system, 512 MB RAM, 120+60+40 GB drives, and a pair of 17″ LCDs? 😉

3 thoughts on “Computer Pricing

  1. I think $1K is far less than it’d cost me to build! The processor alone is $659 at Newegg. The monitor’s another $300 or so. That’s the cost of the system, and you still have the 500 GB hard drive and 2GB RAM to put in, and, of course, chassis, power supply, DVD drive, media reader, keyboard, printer…

    Someone restrain me!

  2. The quality, Matt! Think of the quality!

    You could always just buy a better case/mobo later on if you wanted to get serious about loading it up with premium hardware I guess. It does seem a bit too good to be true… Then again, another part of me wants you to get a shiny new computer. I’m not sure why. 😛

    -Kyle

  3. Heh: the $400 deal is the laptop I just bought for Mindy. Vista is an unfortunate fact of life, although I managed to upgrade to 2GB of RAM for $55 (after rebates — which I don’t like, but couldn’t resist). So far so good, but the memory upgrade is a must.

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