State of the Hobby

From: William Donzelli <aw288_at_osfn.org>
Date: Thu Jul 1 19:31:34 1999

> OKay, $500 or $1000 is alot less than the $4k+ these things
> cost when they were new, but $500 is *still* alot of money for
> most people, certainly for one who's just starting out.

It may be alot for someone starting out, sure, but then someone starting
out might not want to go for the cream. That might be aiming just a bit
too high.

> As I said, that's still alot of money. The cool thing about this
> hobby was that you didn't need alot to get cool stuff. That's
> starting to change.

For starting? No. Despite all of the talk about the $510 Mac, there are
bushels of machines that are in the under $50 category - some pretty darn
nice ones, too. This seems to be like the press reporting about
multi-million dollar personal injury lawsuits - they really are rarer
than hens teeth, but the newspeople make it sound like it happens all of
the time. There will always be very affordable classic computers - only
the creme will go ballistic.

William Donzelli
aw288_at_osfn.org
Received on Thu Jul 01 1999 - 19:31:34 BST