Self Same computers

At 01:43 PM 9/6/01 -0700, McManis, Charles wrote: With prices dropping so low, computers have become more disposable. But even with the $200 Celeron 566 you can buy today, it still has drive bays and memory slots and IDE and USB I/O interfaces. A vast part of the computer market is the selling of add-ons and replacement components. How cheap will computers need to be before you'll throw one away because the CD drive stopped working? Does commoditization necessary mean they'll no longer be expandable, and that they'll be expendable? (Driving to the office tonight, a very beat-up and rusty car very nearly matched the speed of my 2001 model.) Does it mean people won't want to buy replacement parts or upgrade options? What might this mean for classic computers? In fifteen years, some of them may be unbootable, as the ASP-like web services they depended on have disappeared like so many dog-food-selling dot-com ephemera sites. To stretch the auto analogy, even in the smallest towns there are still auto parts stores and repair shops and at the next level, all the junk yards and parts dealers who fill the needs of the repair stores. With the surging wave of enthusiastic game-players who rapidly drove the pace of graphics card development far beyond what the earlier CAD and computer graphics market ever demanded, has emerged a new class of computer owners who eagerly upgrade, tweak, customize and polish their systems beyond all reason. Just like car enthusiasts. :-) - John