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So I bought my son an hp pavilion with 1T SSD, 16Gb RAM and an i5 with a middle good Radeon four years ago for 530€. It is a fairly decent PC, even gaming is fine.
Now the same setup (for any brand) is starting at about 900€. What the elephant ? OK, Covid, shortness of chips, raw material costs, etc... but really ? Paying at least double as much for the same thing four years later - has the industry gone crazy ?
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Rage wrote: has the industry gone crazy ?
Was it ever sane?
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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As within other industry, they charge all the traffic will bear.
There are shipping problems, chip fabric problems, COVID issues, etc., but the biggest problem is that people are simply buying more equipment for "remote work" etc.
One result of a shortage is price rises.
Econ. 101.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Don't forget all the people who have perfectly good PCs, but can't run Windows 11.
And a lot of people are desperate to have the latest stuff from Microsoft. 
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I doubt that is all that many people. Most of those will want to wait till it actually comes on their new machine.
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There are also still many scalpers, with botfarms, which grab up any GPU priced less than 150% of retail and even then many will grab them. Those captcha are basically nothing except a hassle for the real humans ensuring that the real bots walk away with the prizes. That allows many vendors to raise their prices. Even Microcenter has got ridiculous with their pricing, and they held the line for so very long.
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Loads of stuff has massively increased in price due to demand and the lack of chips.
PCs, Cars ... because of chip shortages, new cars aren't being bought in the same numbers. So the price of second hand cars is still increasing massively.
It's not a good time to buy a PC or a Car - but wait a little time, and there will be a glut of both and the prices will drop, maybe below what they were.
Look at what happened to PPE prices - at one point, face masks were about doubling in price every time you bought 'em! Now, they are back to "reasonable levels" because there is a glut. The most expensive I paid for a box of 50 was £8.80, now they are £1.98 including delivery ...
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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If you want to call yourself a computer scientist / programmer ...
.. and you have problems with an investment of 1000 EUR for earning money?
Then better change your job! Every carpenter who buys a new planing machine spends multiple times!
What kind of wimps are you here ...?
modified 24-Oct-21 21:01pm.
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Cool, lets all get new systems. Where do we send the bill?
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1) Using the computer for dev work was never mentioned or implied.
2) A planing machine does not become obsolete in the same sense as a computer.
3) Unless you've never complained about the cost of something drastically increasing, you are also a "wimp".
4) With all the fallacious reasoning, maybe you should change your job 
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True story from the old days (a little after 1980):
This was in the DOS/dBase II days, no graphics. So when an architect told me (still a Comp.Sci student) that they had bought a PC at their office, I was surprised: For what? Well ... They had this two-floppy machine, with DOS, dBase II with the technical standard for building construction on one floppy, the budgeting of their tender on the other one. This program checked that their budget included the cost of everything required by the construction standard, like door handles, window sills and cables for the electric power. Very often, a number of such small amounts were overlooked, but they might add up to a considerable amount.
How large is the hard disk? I asked. They had no harddisk, only two floppies. Geee! I exclaimed, Then you might go for supper while waiting for the program to complete! Now the architect gave me an overbearing look: Well, for a large tender it could take an hour or two, but earlier, when we did such checks manually, it might require a couple man-weeks. Sometimes a man month, for the really large tenders.
And, for the very first project where we used this program, it pointed out overlooked expenses in our initial budget setup, adding up to far more than the complete cost of the PC and all the software. So the system paid itself in full on its first run!
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That's unnecessarily harsh, making assumptions, and adds no value to the discussion whatsoever 
Cheers,
Vikram.
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It is not about the money or the invest (you are right that money spent in good tools is well spent money), I was only pointing out that prices have gone very high for now almost obsolete material, and that there is nothing justifying it, even the "current" situation. But the link on the youtube video in one earlier post is a very good answer to it.
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Rage wrote: has the industry gone crazy
Have you not noticed what other industries are doing right now? It's hardly limited to IT.
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Yes, very.
For a variety of reasons that would become political I don't think pricing on a range of things (not just computers) will ever return to the old normal.
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markrlondon wrote: I don't think pricing on a range of things (not just computers) will ever return to the old normal.
Prices on electronics have gone steadily down for the 40+ years I have been using computers. My first PC was a 25 MHz 386 with 40 Mbyte disk and a 1990 price tag of approx 20 KNOK. Correcting for inflation, that is about 3800 EUR.
OK, we have seen a bump the last year or so. Several new chip factories are currently under construction, and more are planned. When completed, they must first handle a huge backlog, but that won't take forever. Then we might be left with a huge over-capacity, leading to prices being slashed to way below today's (or yesterday's) level. I dare not make guesses about when the backlog has been wiped out; completing the factories will take a few years, and it will probably take another couple of years to handle the backlog.
Maybe my current PC will hold up until then 
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Not only PCs...
I have to buy new car, so when looking I saw some of them going up to almost 10% in a weekend.
Checking Friday: 80k, Checking Monday: 87k
Same car, same handler. I was like 
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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i don't know how many lives were protected, but now additional 350 millions (of the top of my head) may die out of starvation, world wide.
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M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Also lots of people went smartphone for their Facebook needs, and lots of gamers went console.
There is no same need for general purpose computers like it was ten years ago.
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They are, for what I saw. I wanted to change a couple key components on my PC to keep it powerful, it's not worth it. I'd end up paying the same amount I paid to build it from scratch and the benchmark performances wouldn't increase by much.
GCS d--(d-) s-/++ a C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
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To get to some nitty details to see if what comparing from 5 years ago (2016) to today, Ill try to quickly mention some specs.
Storage, iv a feeling SSD ratinied pricing. so unlike HDD over 5 years. would be 1TB to 4TB. but SSD maybe 1TB to 2TB.
RAM - which did you get in 2016 - DDR3 was common, and DDR4 was new.
So if comparing with 2021 prices, is that DDR3 (2016) to DDR4 (2021) prices or if comparing to the currently new DDR5.
i5 - Intel is on the 11th generation of i5 cores. So can be an easily hidden and overlooked comparison. If the 2016 was a year old of purchase, might have been a bargain and generation they phasing out, versus now (yes with stock shortages) with an equally one year old 10th generation, or if comparing to a newer 11th generation.
likly comparing with the comparable intel chip might be tricky to match price as the numbers and when they released versus purchased requires a bit of digging through.
stable component comparison to look at:
2016 - ddr3, 1TB ssd, 6th gen intel i5 (6400 / 6500)
2021 - ddr4, 2tb ssd, 10th gen intel i5 (10400 / 10500)
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You are right, one should not compare bananas with apples.
DDR4 in my case, i5 of 6th generation, and 2T HDD.
Still, I do not think that a similar spec with an 11th generation i5 and 512Gb SDD (this is what I looked up) should cost double than what I wrote above.
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Just reminded myself of m2 ssd. but quick search the prices aren't that much different. I think the chips themselves are the same and just connector/housing is the big difference.
Apart from supply shortages, I do not know enough if the difference of motherboard with m2 slot could shift another 20$ on tag, but yeah not x2 price for similar aged kit.
Also if the i5 looking at has on board graphics,. i think they have had for some time, just another food for thought.
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