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Tuesday December 1, 2009 10:34 PM AEST
Skip Navigation LinksPC Authority > Group Tests > The $2,000 Question

The $2,000 Question

by Staff Writers  on Jan 1, 1900
Tags: The | $2,000 | Question
A game is played out whenever we do a Labs feature with a price point: the vendors cobble together a magic formula that determines what is the appropriate mix of components for the balance in performa
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A game is played out whenever we do a Labs feature with a price point: the vendors cobble together a magic formula that determines what is the appropriate mix of components for the balance in performance and features. And in doing so, part of the equation is to decide where the corners are to be cut, because when working to an artificial limitation like this tradeoffs are bound to occur. The questions they ask themselves are along the lines of 'Do we go with the 500MHz Pentium III instead of the Celeron, and pare the difference in cost back by supplying a 15in monitor instead of the 17in model?' It's a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul.





The Australian PC market has historically embraced a $2,000 sweet spot as the most affordable price point for packaging the most appealing current technology into a system. Call it a conspiracy if you like but everyone - from the component players like Intel, software vendors like Microsoft, their distribution arms and sales channels, right through to the Harvey Norman franchise - are conscious of product positioning and the market expectations for the consumer at this price.





News from across the Pacific says the sub-US$1,000 PC market is booming. August 1999 quarter figures show phenomenal growth in this market segment. Locally, the phenomenon for el-cheapo PCs with a Net connection is just starting to gain some momentum. Some may see it as a momentary fad: we tend more towards the belief that this is a genuine new market that will operate in the long term but never seriously compete with the fully-appointed $2,000 PC for the hearts, minds or units sold of the general population. The sweet spot will continue to endure as prices come down but new technology arrives to fill the void.





Having said that, our Labs team wasmildly surprised at the variety of configurations offered for a $2,000 ceiling. Firstly the CPUs ranged from Celeron/433MHz to Pentium III/500MHz. Monitors also varied widely from poor 15in to our first peek at a 17in 'Flatron' screen. Some included network cards; others preferred including internal modems; none offered both. There was bundled software in some deals and a total absence of anything other than the system drivers and utilities in others.





Hard drive capacities ranged from 6 to 10GB, which is not much in dollar terms. Three systems came clad as desktops and the other seven were tower configurations. Graphics cards were a mixed lot with some preferring a motherboard-integrated solution and others electing for a TNT2-chipset card, although none provided the full 32MB option.


So take a look at what sort of bang 2,000 bucks will get you. There's probably a combination that you'd find appealing among the ten contenders we present but even if there isn't there's room to play the mix and match game with most dealers.
This article appeared in the December, 1999 issue of PC Authority.


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