I am guilty of absorbing every one I get my hands on. The bad news is the price of a number of components, memory, and by default computers are going to radically increase in time for the Christmas buying season. The reasons are many, some have to do with the normal sequence of lowering the output on an older product, some have to do with some unusual component failures from Intel and some have to do with Mother Nature. Mankind being the materialistic animal he has become is bound to take advantage of the situation by doing a little fancy price gouging. I suppose we should give some sequence to the problems so you might decide for yourselves how bad its going to get.
Lets start with memory.
In the recent past, 32-Meg has been deemed to be enough minimal memory to get the job done. A LOT of system manufactures was selling machines with this amount of memory. Two or three months ago memory began getting tight. More and more devices are using it from toys to toasters. Then came Mother Nature in the form of an earthquake in Taiwan.