February 1999: Bought 400 mHz Pentium computer with a massive 64MB in memory, a DVD-ROM drive, and a 6GB hard drive. Cost: $1750.
August 2001: Bought Athlon 1700 computer with 512MB in memory, a DVD-ROM and a 12x CD-RW burner, a GeForce 2 video card, a Soundblaster 5.1, 60GB hard drive, and a Firewire card. Cost: $1500.
January 2004: Wife would like a replacement for the 400 mHz computer she's been using. Priced a Dell 2.66 P4 with 512MB in memory, a DVD+/-RW burner, 120GB hard drive, and onboard sound and video. Cost: $1000.
Even if I put a GeForce 4 card and a SoundBlaster card on this new computer, it'll still be cheaper than the Athlon 1700 I'm currently using. And the thing is, the wife probably doesn't need this much power -- I can order from a company not Dell, cut some corners and get it down to $800. Still, I'd be getting 10 times the computer of the 400 the wife is using for about half the cost.
