BG> Mainly just commenting on something I thought I'd not be seeing this
BG> century - 16Mb SIMMs for under $200 a pop.  There's no longer any
BG> excuse for people NOT to be running 32Mb machines these days...

KR> 48 megs are even better (:

 BG> True, but I can wait until changing to NT for that.

adobe recomend ram 5x the size of a picture when editting in photoshop. it
seems quite uncanny to run something like an unsharp mask filter on a 10
meg picture and not see the disk light flicker. it can be a little
disconcerting with programs that dont give a progress indication, with no
reassuring flashing of the disk light, you wonder if the whole thing has
locked up sometimes (:

KR> there seems to be divided opinion in the industry as to whether prices will 
KR> remain low or go back up to some degree.

 BG> Suffice it to say that it's a very brave man who buys a warehouse full
 BG> of RAM these days.  I personally feel that it will slowly rise again,
 BG> then level out to about half what it was last year, but I'm only
 BG> guessing.

i certainly wouldnt put money on any pc pricing at present, its all too
chaotic. all you can do is to decide when what you want is in your price
range and buy then.

KR> the feeling is though, that it aint going to get too much cheaper in the 
KR> short term. i'm just glad that i didn't take 16megs when it seemed like a 
KR> bargain at $400, i got 32 for almost the same price.

 BG> Exactly, but even if it does drop further, the difference as a
 BG> proportion of overall price will only be minimal, so there's no real
 BG> reason to hang off for better prices now.

 BG> Anyway, sod RAM.  I'm waiting for the $150 5Gb mode 4 EIDEs...

i've got enough disk space for the immediate future, but, if you want a
real bargain, there was an ad in the sydney trading post for 4gig
barracudas at $12xx, and 9 gig elites at $17xx. the barra is one of the
fastest disks around, spinning at 7200 rpm, and the elite comes in at under
$200 per gig, you cant buy shitbox ide drives at that price.

actually i think that the price of entry level drives will stay in the
$250-300 range. currently 1 gig is entry level, 6-12 months time that may
be 1.5 or 2 gig, it all depends on how much they can cram on one platter.
you'll get the previous generation cheaper for a while as the old stocks
are cleared, just as with 500meg drives now, but i think that you will see
the current technology at a pretty constant price, just that you'll be
getting more for your money. it may be a few years though before you see 5
gigs for that price. it will be interesting to see what happens when
consumer drives hit 8 gigs, thats the brick wall for dos/windows (i dont
know about os/2). they cant go above that without a total re-write of the
concepts.

                     keith
@EOT:

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