| ▲ | sokoloff 6 hours ago |
| After the recent run-up, where are prices on a per-performance basis? Back to 2019? Computers were incredibly more expensive when I was growing up. People bought them anyway. Is a computer that lasts 5-8 really productive years (and is still serviceable for another 5-7) and costs $1500 really a deal-breaker just because it was $1000 and on sale for $850 a year ago? Even if it doubled again, it still doesn’t price normal people out, IMO. |
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| ▲ | donmcronald 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| > Is a computer that lasts 5-8 really productive years (and is still serviceable for another 5-7) and costs $1500 really a deal-breaker just because it was $1000 and on sale for $850 a year ago? Even if it doubled again, it still doesn’t price normal people out, IMO. Maybe it's different in the US. In Canada, the median income for 25-54 years old was just under $60k / year in 2024. When you're talking about a $3k USD computer, it's pushing 10% or more of the median after tax income. My gut reaction to that is that most people don't even end up with that much disposable income in total, let alone for a single purchase. HN is skewed with people way at the top end of income earners, especially on a global scale. Imagine getting $30k / year to spend on everything you need and then consider how much $3k on a computer is. My dad had to take a loan to buy our first computer. Who wants that? It's dumbfounding to see the number of people cheering on backwards progress where we end up where we were 3+ decades ago. |
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| ▲ | sokoloff 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > When you're talking about a $3k USD computer, it's pushing 10% or more of the median after tax income. If it lasts for 10 years, it's more like 1% of the after tax income of a median individual earner over that period. I think a computer is clearly valuable enough that people will entirely rationally spend 1% of their income on it if that's what it costs. (I'm not "cheering it on"; I'm just observing and predicting that lots of normal people will still buy computers.) | | |
| ▲ | BobbyJo 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Computers really aren't that valuable to the average person who already has a smart phone. For everyone else, many probably have a work issued computer, and don't need one at home.
The market for high end home hardware is really only gamers and tech workers, and gamers will fall back to closed hardware fast if price/perf pushed them to do it. A big reason PC gaming thrived 2010-2020 was PCs were better on a price/perf basis. |
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| ▲ | AshleyGrant 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I think your idea of what "normal people" can afford is a bit off. Normal people aren't buying $1500 computers. And they definitely aren't buying $3000 computers. |
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| ▲ | sokoloff 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | An 4K Apple ][ cost the equivalent of around $7K when released. A C64 cost the equivalent of around $2K when released. Both were fairly popular and vastly less useful than a computer today. If the cheapest useful computer ends up costing $3K, it will still be purchased and will still be worth it at around $1/day of useful life. | | |
| ▲ | iamjackg 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The C64 sold "between 12.5 and 17 million units" in its lifetime [0], vs. worldwide PC shipments of "71.5 million units in the fourth quarter of 2025." (emphasis mine) [1] It's truly an apples (hehe) to oranges comparison, and in my opinion it only reinforces the point that "normal people" will no longer be able to purchase computers, just like the C64 was not a mainstream product. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20160306232450/http://www.pageta...
[1] https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2026-1-20... | | |
| ▲ | sokoloff 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | > "normal people" will no longer be able to purchase computers, Starbucks' revenue was almost $10B in the last quarter. Most people can clearly afford $1/day for something as useful as a computer. | | |
| ▲ | iamjackg 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | That seems like a false equivalence to me, even if we ignore the fact that only 21% of that revenue came from non-US countries. There are enormous chunks of the world where the local equivalent of $1500 is a life-changing amount of money. |
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| ▲ | deathanatos 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It was nice, in the 90s and 00s when computing hardware's cost was just falling so rapidly. I think it was like what, 1.5x "stuff" each year? Like RAM going 1.5x bigger every 12 months, CPU frequencies increased by that much. Per-unit prices were falling. Now, per unit costs is rising faster than inflation. The WD HDD I bought in 2017 for $65 real ($49 nominal) is now $95 real, 50% more expensive after inflation. Trust me when I say my income has not increased by 50% post-inflation since then! (Also … I really should not have checked that number. Needless to say, it's not positive.) |
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| ▲ | marshray 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| I just looked at some low-end NAS-oriented HDDs. The cost $/TB is 2x similar ones I bought 5 years ago. That has never before happened in the history of computing, and it violates long-held, fundamental assumptions. |
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| ▲ | abanana 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | It happened in 2011 when massive flooding in Thailand stopped a huge chunk of global production. Hard drive prices pretty much doubled overnight. | | |
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