Re: Microsoft to force new Outlook on Windows 10 PCs

On 1/16/25 3:40 PM, Physfitfreak wrote:

On 1/16/25 5:42 AM, -hh wrote:

On 1/16/25 1:41 AM, Physfitfreak wrote:

On 1/15/25 7:34 PM, Paul wrote:

The enthusiast sites have more info, if you need it.
>
https://www.tomshardware.com/best-picks/best-pc-builds-gaming

>
>
$500 computer is a "budget" computer these days? Hehe :)

>
Sure is.
>
In 1981, IBM's original PC 5150 debuted at $2,880 for a 64K system with one floppy drive.  In today's dollars, that would be a shade over $10K.
>
Back in that era, PC Magazine's editor Bill Machrone quipped:
"the computer you want always costs $5,000."
>
And 1984's price buster of the TI-99/4A started at $525.  What percentage of your gross monthly pay was $525 back in 1984?
Don't know about you, but for me, it would've been around 33%.
>
>
-hh

  $525 was about half of what I made in 1984. Back then I was getting $700 and something per month for TA/RA work in school. I also made money by tutoring ($75 per sitting no matter how long the sitting lasted - rarely over 4 hours). I had at least one tutoring session per week, so that was another $300 a month. So about $1000 per month, and I lived comfortably (money-wise that is - in reality I was conducting a tough as well as quite challenging life in graduate school).
 But you (and I so far in this post) are digressing from the point I made.

We're hitting different (but related) points.  My point is that PCs used to be a lot more expensive than this $500 price point for a new PC today, which is why its pretty fair to call it "budget".
We could do the same with automobiles:  40 years ago, a new Porsche 911 cost $25K ... but $25K today buys a new Civic or another "budget" car.

I didn't pay "$525" for a computer in 1984. {stores of salvage}
 Do you get the picture?

Sure:  you've not bought new, but used salvage/used gear.  And that used gear is cheaper than buying new isn't a particularly surprising fact.

I don't need a $5000 computer for any reason under the sky, not even a $500 computer. Those who need them must want to do a Jupiter flyby :) >
Right now I'm using a computer that I bought last week for $12 in a _thrift_store.

Good for you.  For my own workflow/use cases, I have a pretty hefty dataset for which a high latency interferes and is hindering, so I'm willing to pay for the hardware which provides a much lower latency: a decade ago, the solution was RAID0 hard drives .. today, its SSD.
-hh