"Yousuf Khan" wrote

| So I looked at the prices of some of these parts and my eyes popped out
| of their sockets! Have they gone crazy? WTF?
|

I've noticed that, too, but it started before
coronavirus. I don't know why, especially given that
just about any hardware these days is "good enough".

I built my current system in 2015, with an 8-core
AMD FX-8300. At the time I think it was about $65.
The whole system was only about $400. The motherboard,
Asus M5A78L-M, was also about $65, and the onboard
network/graphics/audio are perfectly fine for me. I don't see
why anyone but a gamer needs a dedicated graphics card.
Later I saw the same CPU for more like $200+. And today
there seems to be a much larger range. It used to be that
the newer ones were expensive, then they quickly
got cheaper. Today I haven't kept up with technology
changes, so I have no idea what another $1,000 buys
you.

Recently, though, I needed a cheap graphics card
for an older Win7 computer so that I could get an HDMI
port to feed to a TV. I think it was something like $39
at Microcenter. Reasonable. They must have had 100 of
them. apparently low-end graphics is a big seller.

I also find things vary more than they used to. Staples
sells an HDMI cord for maybe $22-35 while Microcenter
has it for $10. Similarly, Staples was selling network switches
starting at about $50. I think I paid about $20 from a
company called Provantage. The prices often just seem
arbitrary. I suspect that maybe software is setting the
prices.

I saw an interesting example of that the other day in
Home Depot. A couple were looking at safety glasses.
There's a whole section of them, mostly the same thing.
They were loolking at a pair of plastic glasses for $10, in
a blister pack. I stopped and pointed out that the very
glasses I had on, as part of my coronavirus shopping attire,
were the same thing and came in a plastic bag, 6 pair
for $20. That item was just a couple of feet away. It's nuts.

Recently I decided to set up something new for my brother,
who recently had a stroke, and I decided to do it with a
Raspberry Pi. Microcenter had a monitor on sale for $70.
That was the big expense. The whole Pi setup kit was only
$90, plus about $20 for wireless keyboard/mouse. About
$200 for a complete, serviceable Linux system for Internet,
email, etc. That gets him 25 GB+ storage and 2 GB RAM.
And those Pi's are fast.