Re: Low-level vs. High-level programming (was My First Computer)

["Randy McLaughlin" <randy@nospam.com>]

"White Flame (aka David Holz)" <whiteflame52@y.a.h.o.o.com> wrote in message
news:bcq5ct$j0i$1@barad-dur.nas.com...
> "Kevin Lawton" <kepla@btinternet.com> wrote in message
> news:bcq29b$121$4@titan.btinternet.com...
> > The 2 GHz system I built a few months ago cost about 600 pounds = 900
> > dollars. Given that 200 dollars = 130 pounds, we'd be lucky to get much
> > better than a used Pentium-II for that. Maybe a used sub-GHz Penium-III
> for
> > a little bit more.
>
> I guess economy computers in the USA are a bit cheaper then.  Here's $265
> for a new, basic, Athlon XP 2000:
> http://www.maincomp.com/shop/case_info.jsp?id=16630&pw=
>
> --
> White Flame (aka David Holz)
> http://www.white-flame.com/
> (spamblock in effect)

I have found a lot of truth in:

"You don't always get what you pay for, but you are much more unlikely to
get what you don't pay for."

My favorite example is dell.com  They sell several different "qualities" of
computer from home to business.  In the "business" class they sell a
computer for $349.00.  It does not include a monitor, mouse, keyboard, hard
drive, floppy drive, cd drive, OS, etc.  To get everything added that it
needs to be a "business" quality computer makes it $1450.00.  Yes I am sure
you can buy much cheaper computers.  I prefer to build them up myself from
quality parts ($1000.00 range)  I find that cheap computers are in fact
cheap computers.

The truth is powerful computers are much cheaper than paying for quality
programming.  If you are Micro$loth you get others to pay for your bad
programming and they have to buy the new computers to run the new poor
quality software to run it on since the older computers don't have the
"horse-power".  Of course we sent men to the moon using computers with less
"horse-power" than the IBM-PC (8088).  I admit that the astronauts did not
need to use MS Word though.