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The cost of a free PC
IN 12 months, people are less likely to misunderstand you or look anxiously for
approaching men in white coats when you use the words URL, FTP, spam or ping in polite
conversation. Big retailers such as Harvey Norman and Myer will justifiably pick up the
credit for this increased computer and Internet-savviness.
They, along with a gathering force of computer sellers, have started giving away PCs and
Net access . . . on the surface at least.
Harvey Norman's zero price PC with 30 months of One.tel
access will cost only the price of the access, for example. The deal works out at $79.95 a
month for 30 months, or not quite $2400. For this the buyer receives a PC that would
otherwise probably cost $1900 and is bound to an Internet Service Provider that rated
lowly in an Australian PC magazine survey last November.
Those of us who have been on the Net for three or four years might want to scoff at the
new deals, which are expected to increase Australian PC sales by between 10 and 15 per
cent. Many of us forked out $3000 plus for a PC in 1995-96. That PC would be laughed at
now and be worth $200 if we were lucky. The only way to retain value has been to keep up
with the Net's capacity to chew resources by upgrading RAM (8Mb to 64Mb), modem (14.4K to
56K), processor (66Mhz to 366Mhz) and so on. Throw in software upgrades from Windows 3.x
to 98 and associated add-ons necessary to make Bill Gates an even richer man and you are
talking around $1500 to $2000 extra.
The Harvey Norman "free" PC is no doubt going to suffer similar upgrade mania
over the next three years. And the area where the "free" buyer is locked in is
the one where prices might be expected to drop.
A person who signed up with Perth provider iiNet
Technologies in 1995 paid $35 a month for unlimited access. Today, nothing has
changed. None of the big Australia-wide ISPs yet comes close to the flat rates for
unlimited access offered by iiNet or other WA ISPs such as Wantree.
Still, the more you look at the Harvey Norman deal the more you see its attractions. Let's
say your total cost after 30 months with the chain store is $2400. If you went out and
bought a similar PC and chose your own unlimited ISP at $35 a month, the cost after 30
months would be $2950. Then again if you opted to go for limited access, you might benefit
from the increased competition in the sector. Three years ago, 150 hours of Internet
access with OzEmail cost $375; today, 150 hours with OzEmail costs just $34.95.
Not everyone needs unlimited Net access. Only a tragic few of us spends every waking hour
connected online. So, the Harvey Norman deal -- looking so good only a few paragraphs ago
-- suffers another setback.
But . . . just to complicate matters, consider this: the tool of the new millennium will
look more affordable and accessible, giving many Australians the badly-needed chance to
join a revolution that up to now has been slightly elitist. Nerdsville might give way to
Dullsville as the demography of Net users starts to resemble that of the general
population.
Commerce will then treat the new onliners to a wealth of appealing Web pages, tempting
them to spend . . . but that's another story.
All articles Copyright: © West Australian Newspapers |
