$800 Price Point Yields Desktop Bargains

Six years ago this week, $800 bought you a HP 734nwith an Athlon 2400+ (2.0GHz), 512 MB memory, 60 GB hard drive, a DVD player and a CD-RW. No monitor or printer. Available at BestBuy. That was a "PC Deal" of the week for a column I wrote then.

Fast forward to this week at BestBuy, where the Deal of the Week in desktops is an HP is an HP Phoenix Special Edition with these specs:

• Quad-core AMD Phenom 9150e (1.8 GHz x 4, 65 watt)
• 5 GB memory
• Double layer DVD burner with LightScribe labeling
• nVidia 6150 graphics card
• 15-in-1 media reader
• Viata Home Premium
• 22" LCD monitor (5 ms response, speakers)
• HP Deskjet All-in-One printer

I'll post these "look backs" occasionally. You have to remember how much we used to spend on PCs and how little we got in today's technology. No inflation in our sector!