Buffalo

Eddie was in town this week and since we were transferring a large for volume of computer files, I had to purchase a 1TB external hard disk for the purpose.  To my chagrin, the price of these hard drives have doubled up over the past few weeks, from an average of P5,000 to the prevailing prices at P10,000 each!  My last hope was to go to the Park Square Mall in Makati--the place is literally a techie's beehive.  Luckily the Hub had a few remaining units of Buffalo hard drives, and I was able to purchase one at old stock prices.  Apparently, the latest price increases are a backlash from the flooding in Bangkok--several HD plants were forced to shut down, and the stocks have dwindled severely.  The forecast is that it will take till August 2012 for the situation to normalize. Coming home, I was thus musing about the prices of tech gadgets, and how volatile the supply and demand situation can be, which is both a good and bad thing, depending on which side of the fence one is situated in.  External HD prices went up, conversely, we've seen price drops too.  Cellphones, can be had for a song--Hua Fei has cell phones retailing for as low at P499.  The Fujitsu Lifebook with an Intel i5 processor and pre-loaded with Windows 7 Home, can be obtained for as low as P27,000.  China-made 6" tablets go for as low at P3,500, and branded 8" Android tablets like Coby retail at P8,000.  It's a competitive techie market, and even the big boys can falter--Research in Motion, the makers of the Blackberry phone, recently announced a delay in the launch of their new models, from early 2012 to late 2012, and some analysts are predicting the demise of this big player.  If you recall, Motorola might have invented the cell phone, and Nokia made the cellphone a household toy, but the cheap smart phones are starting to gain ground these days.

I started off with a Sharp portable BASIC programmable in 1981 and a Commodore 64 in 1982, and look at the computers we have today!