Ford Fiesta !!
I think the packard bell = ford fiesta analogy is woefully off the mark.
Consider it a Yugo, where the only way to increase its value is to fill the tank.
Even then, this may be dis-respectful to the Yugo.
Acer will stick with its policy of pushing up average selling prices for its hardware, despite failing to put a floor under prices so far this year. However, the Taiwanese vendor admitted that at best it would only be able to push up prices on an aggregate level, by launching more products at the high end. The vendor spelled …
Meh, almost everyone who wants a computer now has one, and we don't need to upgrade as much as we used to.
A low-end dual core will be able to do everything now for years to come.
Would love to see those boardroom graphs for all these idiots who rely on them to keep going up every year.
This benefitting the customsers in what way?
Aren't their laws and commisions against companies that get so large they throttle the market the way they see fit?
As I recall it's named after a certain boardgame that's become besmirched recently for making mighty Leeds the second cheapest town on the board.
Used to work for Intel R+D doing PC design --- back in 2002 or so there were endless (mind-less) discussions / plans to to get the PC out of its price spiral. Boy that was a hoot
But bottom line is that Intel + MS got their wish in making Wintel the dominate platform ---- and that was by working from '93 till '99 in standardizing every part of the PC down to its last screw (thats why they all look the same). And by getting Asian manufacturers to compete on price down to the penny.
This allowed them to keep dropping prices while they were boosting performance and reliability (Win95 - Win98 - etc - XP) --- And in the process training PC buyers to expect AND demand low prices AND high performance.
Sometimes you get what you wish for .......
Meanwhile I'm typing this on a nice Apple computer running a real OS ..... how sweet it is