man, computers got cheap all of a sudden didn't they?

[Neal Clayton]

i've been using the same laptop for about 3 years now. was an old sony vaio, which i liked for what it was, but wasn't cheap when i bought it, that's for sure. i think i paid 1900 when i got it, and for laptops under 5 pounds with over 6 hours of battery life, it was one of few choices back then.


unfortunately i dropped it and broke the side of the case open about a month ago and while it still works, i was getting tired of taking it out to the shop to blow the dust out with my compressor, so i figured i'd get a new one.

turns out i had trouble spending 700 dollars on a new HP, which is pretty much superior in every way to my old one in terms of ruggedness, keyboard, screen brightness, etc. i wound up getting one from the mid grade business class (probook) line. even the high end line was only around a thousand.

guess recessions aren't all bad, huh? ;)

[Randal Stevenson]

IMHO, not just recessions. Netbooks are another thing that has brought them down, as what do people use them for?

Heck, compare one of them to your old laptop.

[John Schreiber]

IMHO, not just recessions. Netbooks are another thing that has brought them down, as what do people use them for?
I sat next to a lady using a small (9" across) computer very successfully. Then I realized that her hands were half the size of mine, so the keyboard fit her well.

Maybe they should make keyboards in different sizes for different hand sizes.

[Curt Harms]

I sat next to a lady using a small (9" across) computer very successfully. Then I realized that her hands were half the size of mine, so the keyboard fit her well.

Maybe they should make keyboards in different sizes for different hand sizes.

I have a 10" Asus Eee. I have small hands but had trouble with swiping the touchpad when typing. This is the first machine I've had that is exclusively touchpad-IBM/Lenovo Think Pads with the "eraser" pointer for me, thanks. Anyway, the insert point moving was driving me nuts. The lastest alpha release of Ubuntu Netbook Remix has something where the touchpad can be disabled while alphanumeric keys are in use. My frustration with wandering cursors had decreased considerably:D. I don't know what the time interval between the last keypress and the touchpad being active is, but I haven't noticed any lag. It works great!

The other compromise with Netbooks is screen size. Mine is around 1200X600. It's still great for portability and web browsing/light duty office stuff. Not suitable for industrial strength photo editing, CAD obviously.

[Dan Mages]

I recently bought a new Dell laptop to replace my old HP. I paid roughly the same price as my old HP, but it is definately an improvement in every way possible. They even through in a Dell Mini 10v for $100. For that price, I could not refuse. I have updated it with Ubuntu Netbook Remix and is just fine for light applications. We mainly use it as a music player, in the kitchen to manage recipes, and as a travel computer. The only complaint is that the touchpad is poorly designed.

[Scott Shepherd]

Probably not as much to do with the economy, rather Moore's Law :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law

Every 24 months, the speed doubles and the price to do the same thing cuts itself in half, basically.

It's been working since the 50's, and is supposed to continue for a while.

[Rick Gifford]

Computers as a whole are much more affordable. My first was $2500 and it only had 200MB hard drive lol (a packard bell many years ago...)

Last laptop I bought was $650. Its very nice.

Use to be you had to be carefull what you bought or you would get junk, but they have gotten real good and making these now.

Of course your needs dictate how much you need, but for moderate use getting a computer on sale off the shelf works just fine.

I use to build them but who wants to pay you to do that when they are so inexpensive now.

I agree, prices arent bad at all.

[Dennis Thornton]

One of the reasons that laptop prices have dropped so much is due to the increase in volume. More and more people are buying laptops instead of desktops.

[Prashun Patel]

I've been the IT purchaser for my company for about 10 years. I can say that they've gotten cheaper in price AND quality.

The IBMs & Dells we bought in the 90's were like tanks. They took a long time to obsolesce, and we upgraded then based on the need for more speed, memory, and disk.

In the past 6 years, I've seen a huge decrease in quality from Dell. Motherboards, cd roms, hard disks; I've had them all fail on 2-3 yr old machines.

Nowadays computers are disposable; cheaper to buy a new one rather than fix one. Is that a good thing? Not for those landfills in China....

We just got a few of those Dell Mini's. JEEZ! Under $500 and fully stocked.

[Dave Lehnert]

My first computer was $3,000 in 97.

The laptop I am using now is two years old and was $499. I could have spent more and almost did. Was afraid this laptop was too small.
I have learned for my needs, a cheap one is all I need. I don't need double layer DVD drive and all that junk that goes out of date in a week.

People spend WAY TOO MUCH for a computer they don't need when basic will do.

[Randal Stevenson]

While a netbook isn't suitable for CAD, I think it would be suitable (albeit maybe a bit slower) for Sketchup and Cutlist type software, as well as the typical newsgroups/surfing, etc.

For those of you who don't like the touchpad, I don't often use it, just when I need something on the road. Otherwise, when I bought my Asus N10J (effectively high end netbook), I also picked up, via Ebay, a full size bluetooth mouse.

Now I have been considering getting a external moniter, and using a USB keyboard, so I can use it easily at the desk when needed. Anyone know if the screen resolution is because of the display, or due to the video card enclosed? (mine has dual video, Intel and Nvidia, onboard and switchable)

[Karl Brogger]

While a netbook isn't suitable for CAD, I think it would be suitable (albeit maybe a bit slower) for Sketchup and Cutlist type software, as well as the typical newsgroups/surfing, etc.

Unless other CAD programs pull alot more, my dell notebook does pretty well running Cabnetware. The size of the monitor is the only thing I don't like about it.

[Curt Harms]

I hooked my netbook up to a Sony 46" LCD. I don't recall what the resolution was but it looked pretty good. VGA video, not DVI and I don't know how much video memory the Intel video circuit has. Enough for at least 1024X768.

[Neal Clayton]

the resolution on your TV likely isn't much larger than the monitor the netbook has, the pixels are just bigger ;).

[Darius Ferlas]

Now I have been considering getting a external moniter, and using a USB keyboard, so I can use it easily at the desk when needed. Anyone know if the screen resolution is because of the display, or due to the video card enclosed? (mine has dual video, Intel and Nvidia, onboard and switchable)

The resolution on your netbook is limited by the physical size of the display, not the chipset or the video card. I'd be surprised if you couldn't do at least 1680 by 1050 on an external monitor. With nvidia you should be able to feed correct video signal to pretty much any consumer grade monitor.

You can try and check it by right clicking on the desktop to get to the display settings. See if the resolution slider will let you go to the right towards higher resolution values. If so, this will tell you what monitors you can get with what native resolutions.

If you can't move the slider to the right do not despair. On some machines this is a software, not hardware restriction in keeping with BIOS settings instructing the OS what makes sense for the given machine.


Unless other CAD programs pull alot more, my dell notebook does pretty well running Cabnetware.

I think Randal meant netbook, not notebook.
But you're certainly correct. I buy laptops for our engineering dept. for use with AutoCAD. These aren't your budget Dell machines though.

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

I paid Five Thousand Dollars in the mid 1980s for a Zero Wait State Proteus computer with a WHOLE MEG of ram and a HUGE BLISTERINGLY FAST 450 Megabyte hard drive.

The thing was like a Cray Computer to me.
OK not a Cray but you get the point

I recall setting it up and my little Pre Teen girls were oooing and ahhing the stupendous wonder of it all. ( so was I)

I got the green screen up.
The Dos prompt blinked
I typed: "BLOW THE WORLD UP"
and waited for my little girls to respond with my hand over the "enter" Key.

They cried out in despair and alarm "Daddy you can't what will happen~!!?"

I said: "Lets see" and while they cringed, I dramatically hit enter.

I forget the DOS command prompt for "no such code"
But that 's what happened. The world didn't end.

Ohh the innocent years .

[John Schreiber]

I paid Five Thousand Dollars in the mid 1980s for a Zero Wait State Proteus computer with a WHOLE MEG of ram and a HUGE BLISTERINGLY FAST 450 Megabyte hard drive. . . .

Your first computer had a hard drive? Does anybody remember cload on the TRS-80? Cassettes!

They say that in another 40 years, a computer with the power of a desktop will be the size of a blood cell. Then what happens?

[Curt Harms]

Your first computer had a hard drive? Does anybody remember cload on the TRS-80? Cassettes!

They say that in another 40 years, a computer with the power of a desktop will be the size of a blood cell. Then what happens?

Microsoft REALLY gets under your skin?:p

[Greg Peterson]

Probably not as much to do with the economy, rather Moore's Law :

Every 24 months, the speed doubles and the price to do the same thing cuts itself in half, basically.



Just a slight correction. Moores law desribes the reduction in transistor size as doubling every two years. In other words, they are able to place twice the number of transistors in the same space every two years.

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

Your first computer had a hard drive?

Yup. The thing was the size of a Volkswagen - The drive I mean


They say that in another 40 years, a computer with the power of a desktop will be the size of a blood cell. Then what happens?

We will begin the wonderful adventure of bionis enhancement.

There will be crazy fringers on both sides One; screaming about the loss of humanity, there will be pesudo religious arguments reminiscent of: "If Man were meant to fly god would have given him wings" and on the other crazy folks trying to become super enhanced Boinic monstrosities with the world's data and knowledge packed in their brains and the physical strength of Earth moving machines.

And each of the fringers will insist that the other ones prove their points.

Somewhere in the middle I hope they cure a few diseases and extend human quality of live by some meaningful amount. I'd love to dance at my great great Grandaughter's wedding. Make her kids guitars etc.

[Bill Neely]

My first computer was a Toshiba 550 that had a whopping 128K of RAM and dual 5 1/4" floppies, no hd. Printer was an Okidata ML92.

We had an 800MB server at work that was the size of a refrigerator.

[John Shuk]

I got an IPOD touch a few months ago. I have to say that when I'm at home I find little reason to mess with the desktop. I do however tend to avoid the creek and some other sites as it just isn't as easy to browse on the IPOD. It really is a game changer though. With cloud computing coming we should all be saving money in the future as we won't need a monstrous OS and lots of bulky programs to do what we want. Just a browser and some basic apps.