We all know that technology continues to get cheaper and cheaper every year.  But this was brought into sharp relief yesterday when I looked up the invoice for Dave’s computer to see what components it contained.  I built Dave’s computer in 2006.  It was a graduation present from my parents and meant to be Dave’s computer in college.  At the time he was really big into WoW and other video games and he had a crappy old HP computer.  The total price of the computer was $2421.92.  It included a 500 GB Seagate drive (I was really into Seagate then) for $280!  Nowadays you can get a 500 GB drive for around $50.  The DVD burner didn’t fall as dramatically in price.  The one I bought him was $36 and you can get a pretty decent one now around $20.  I’m not going to focus on the motherboard price because those tend to actually stay constant for a standard entry board; around $100.  The next expensive item was the graphics card.  It was a PCI Express x16, 512 MB Radeon card and it cost $600.  Nowadays you can get the same thing for less than $50.  The RAM was 4 GB for $439!  I just bought that much RAM for $90.  Finally, the Pentium IV 3.8 GHz processor for $621.  Newegg no longer carries P4s.  Last time I shopped for one, about two years ago, it was $50.  (The keyboard and mouse were gaming-specific so they sold for a premium, and Windows XP was $89)

Long time readers will know how much I love building computers.  And I have been given the chance to build another one!  This time it’s for Danielle’s aunt who saw the one I built for my father-in-law.  Her old computer is not fast enough for what she needs it to do so she asked me to design her a new one.  I decided to go with a nice, sleak Shuttle case since they don’t have tons of room in NYC for the uber-towers I typically use for myself.  Also, it’s pretty much 100% likely that she isn’t going to upgrade it - ever.