Not That Sane. V Lakshman. Every Wednesday.

A compelling price point (Nov. 12, '97)

In case all this news of overvalued Asian currencies, a strong dollar, and shaky Asian markets leaves you shrugging, "What's in it for me?", allow me to help you out.

For one thing, everything that you get from Asia is going to be really, really cheap. What things do you get from Asia? Chinese toys around Christmas, cheap cotton clothes from Thailand, all kinds of small plastic things that you fill your house with ... If the idea of dappled, dotted plastic gizmos doesn't fill your heart with joy, what else? Maybe a Korean car? What is that? You want the quality of a Mercedes?

Have I got just the thing for you! Times have never been better to buy a computer -- a cheap desktop PC. Manufacturers of PCs have been migrating to low inventories. So, the falling price of Asian components (disk drives, CD-ROMs, memory chips) will immediately go into the savings of Compaq and Dell. Plus, those guys have found out that PCs under $1000 are a wonderful , heretho untapped market. Intel dropped its prices on low-end 166MHz chips. What all this means is that you can get a pretty good PC (with monitor) for under $1000.

Even I bit the bug, buying one for the home after a long time of dallying. For once, the marketing blitz isn't too far off -- $1000 is a compelling price point.


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