"Brenda Ann" wrote in message
news

"David Eduardo" wrote in message
t...

A parallel would be the number of people who in the mid to late 80's into
the 90's built their own computers. There were parts places all over,
magazines filled with ads for cases and fans.... now there is nearly
nothing.


You're kidding, right? Those ads are everywhere. There are probably at
least as many people building their own computers now as there are buying
pre-built ones. In our house, there are exactly three pre-built desktop
machines (old Gateway minisystems I bought for next to nothing to use as
streaming machines). The other 6 desktop machines (mostly towers) are
built from discrete parts chosen for their particular merits. This is done
by most anyone into serious computing. Those that buy machines off the
shelf are usually doing so just to access e-mail and do a bit of web
surfing.

Computer Shopper went from a 300 page book sold everywhere to a standard
size magazine, mostly with new media devices and such. LA had three local
computer magazines, advertising the screwdriver shops and component sellers.
All are gone, and have been for about 4 to 5 years. And the reason is that
almost 100% of the screwdriver and parts shops are gone, leaving Frys and
the big boxes to sell limited lines of easy to install routers and external
hard drives. Mail order places, like my old drive supplier, Dirt Cheap
Drives, are gone by the hundreds. My case source in Buena Park closed a
couple of years ago, and there are fewer and fewer alternatives in new
motherboards and components.

With over half the market now being laptops, most consumers upgrade the box,
not the components. Most systems are warranty-voided by adding anything
beyond memory, so this is done far less than in the past. The days of
overclocking and selecting special components is long-gone as a general
practice because computers have reached speeds where buying the newest chip
makes scant differnece and overclocking is just not worth the risk for most.

I must have built 50 computers going back to the S-100 bus, but quit about 4
years ago when I could get everything I wanted in a laptop. I preobably also
bought 150 CPUs, dozens of tubes of silicone grease, had cabinets filled
with video cards and modems and motherboards... I used to know the different
Asus boards by number... but like most assemblers I know, the pain is not
worth the gain and assembled units are cheaper now than buying the parts
retail. I buy a new laptop every 12 months, and by the time a new one
arrives, the old one is pretty much ready for recycling... and I save lots
of time trying to get parts.