The fact that computers now outnumber people in my house by a 3 to 1 margin has earned me a few incredulous remarks. Even I find it a bit odd. The explanation, though, sheds some interesting light on the personal computer market of the last several years:
A year and a half ago, I had consolidated down to one Linux computer and a handful of spare parts, with the leftovers going to Dell for recycling. Digital music threw in a monkey wrench: the market-leading and best-integrated solution was iTunes, only available for Mac and Windows.
Despite the fact that Apple’s OS X is Unix-based, they never released a Unix version and the fine folks working on Wine haven’t managed to make iTunes fully functional. The alternative was purchasing several hundred dollars of software (VMWare and a legitimate aftermarket Windows license) plus an Airport Express to pipe music to the stereo in the other room.
Enter Dell, who in addition to an admirably affordable recycling program, has driven the cost of new computers down to the $400 mark. Their volume allows them prices that are difficult to beat building your own comptuer, particularly when it comes to software. Windows pricing for computer makers if far below retail and a closely guarded secret. Given that, it made sense to add a second computer as a jukebox.
My latest aquisition was driven my the current trend in personal computers: the rising popularity and falling cost of laptops. With computers taking a greater role in our lives, who wants to be chained to a particular room or corner of the house? Dell, again, leads in the price wars, but Apple has won a good bit of niche mindshare in offering sexier machines with more robust and inuitive software. They’ve also managed to put a first-class graphical interface on top of a rock-solid Unix base, and put it all on a laptop. That checked off enough of my shopping list to get a MacBook.
And there you have the specific and broad history of how the market has driven the purchase of three computers. The big factors were market segregation, which is often artificial, and cost. Meeting diverse computing needs spreads you across multiple operating systems, and the hardware industry has driven down costs enough that you can do so with separate computers for each.
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