Tom wrote:
> I am very impressed with this machine.  It is making me regret the $1600
> machine I bought a few months ago.  I could have purchased the e-machine,
> installed additional memory, a larger disk drive, and NT workstation, and
> still have come out ahead.

Also based on Gavin's recommendation, we just bought a 333k e-machine as a
replacement for my four year old 133Mhz Gateway which cost me $3000 at the
time.

The amazing thing to me is that PCs have gotten fast enough that a self-
confessed heat-seeking, early-adopter, must-have-the-latest-and-fastest,
sucker like myself can actually be happy with a system like this.  Or
maybe I'm just holding out for an IA-64 system in a couple years :-)

Of course I've already upgraded the little beast with a lan card ($69 for
two PCI lan cards, cables, and a five port hub) so that I can network it
with the old PC and my wife's laptop (multi-player games don't you know),
an extra 64MB of RAM for $100 (ouch, when did RAM get expensive again :-),
and a second hard drive (8.4GB Ultra DMA Maxtor: $149.00 - how could I
possibly pass this up :-), so the total cost *is* creeping up a bit.

There's another company which is going to start selling $299 PCs shortly
too, and the "Free PC" people are going to be renting cheap Linux-based
systems I hear.

There's an interesting report (this week's Computerworld I think) on the
relative sales of PCs in different price tiers in February versus a year
ago.  Under $600 PCs are up 670%, and over $1500 PC are down 70% or
something like that.  It sounds as though the distinction between "PCs"
and "workstations" is being reestablished.  Hardware has pulled way ahead
of software, meaning that almost everyone can be happy without the latest
(high-priced) 500MHz Pentium III type of system.  Assuming that these
makers of cheap PCs can turn a profit, it's hard to imagine the high end
of the market ever regaining the market share that it once had, and it's
also hard to believe that some of the current manufacturers of "traditional"
PCs (IBM, Compaq, HP, Dell) aren't going to be in *serious* trouble very
soon.

G.