USA Today had a great article a few days back that talked about the rapidly declining PC and laptop sales in the Japanese technology market. It’s a pretty interesting read so you may want to check it out if you get a few free minutes.

The article makes a great point regarding the growing internet capabilities of handheld devices like cell phones and video game systems. It also points out the new abilities for digital cameras to connect directly to televisions and to printers without having to go through a computer.

Again, it’s pretty interesting so take a read if you get a chance, but from my view – I don’t think that the PC is going the way of the dinosaur any time soon. There are too many uses for the machine for it to become obsolete. I do, however, think that prices of new computers need to drop dramatically. And I’m not talking about paying $250 for a personal computer with a 15 inch LCD screen and substandard parts, either. I mean when Dell announces a new XPS and HP announces a new high-end laptop, these things can’t be priced at $2,000! There’s no way to keep the larger home computer market sustainable at that price range – it just can’t happen.

Granted, there are increased costs with creating a higher-end computer and that is understandable, but when computers that were high-end 3 or 4 years ago are still priced out of the general consumer market, that’s a problem. That said, Best Buy is offering a $200 computer for Black Friday, but the specs on it don’t look all that exciting.

First of all, it’s an eMachines computer. I know many folks (old college buddies) that have had problems with these computers, though I also know fewer folks who have not had a problem with them. As the article linked above says:

Don’t expect the world though. The PC is rumored to be powered by an Intel Celeron running at 2.66 Ghz (meaning no efficient and powerful ‘Core’ for you), comes with 512 megabytes of RAM (which is the bare minimum for doing just about anything on a computer these days), has a measly 80 Gigabyte hard drive, and it has no DVD burner.

No DVD burner? It’s 2007, right?

Anyway, check out those articles – they are pretty interesting reads.