This article was written by Don VanSyckel, the club president, as a part of "The President's Pen". This article appeared in the October 2006 WYSIWYG newsletter.
Prices Go Down and Features Go Up
by Don VanSyckel
It seems every week when I scan through the newspaper ads computer items get cheaper and cheaper. either the price is going down or the capabilities of the products are going up. Back a short two years ago or so I bought a 256 Kb (1/4 Gb) memory stick for $100. At the time it was on sale and I thought I had gotten a great deal. It was at the time. Now I see a three pack of 1 Gb memory sticks for $40. In this case both the price went down and the capabilities went up. The new price is 40% of the old. The new capability is 12 times ( 3 x (1 Gb) / 1/4 Gb). This gives any overall decrease in $/byte to 3.33% or an increase in bytes/$ of 30.
Image after two years you could buy 30 times more with the same money. That's a bargain in anybody's book. Price have been going down in all areas of computers and likewise the capabilities have been going up. It's hard to predict where this is going but it seems as though it's in the right direction for us, the consumers.
Disk drive have done much the same things although not as dramatically. Laptops are doing it also; the price is coming down and the capabilities are going up. Desktops, external USB disk drives, scanners, and DVD writers are all sliding down in price. Other electronics such as digital cameras are following this same pattern. Handheld computers seem to be least affected, not unaffected. I'm not quite sure why these are not sliding down in price faster. Must be limited suppliers and good demand.
I'm not suggesting you wait for prices to hit the bottom. People used to do that waiting for computers to hit the price bottom before they bought one. Well it's been going on for twenty years. What I am suggesting is to not get caught up in the sales and the hype. If you need something and can afford it, by all means go get it. If it's a toy, you might want to wait a few months. You might be glad you did.
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