If we really want to complain about something, it has to be the rising cost of tuition.
In Canada, household savings rate (as % of disposable after-tax income) was 20% in 1984. In 2004, it has reached a level of 0 and 2006 forecast is <0%. Someone mentioned in this thread that people spend more than they can afford and this backs that statement up. Now, what is more frightening is that Average Income per Household (After transfers and Income taxes in constant 2002$) was $52,300 in 1980 and $54,300 in 2004. Source: People Patterns Consulting
However, of all the 400 subcomponents from the basket of goods, tuition rose 139% since 1992, or the greatest from all items. In comparison, land transportation expenses rose 48.3% and air transportation 102%, etc.....average of all items is 26.5% This is of March 2005. Source: Statistics Canada, catalogue No. 62-001-XPB
In contrast, a $900 P4 2.6@3.2ghz 1gb system I built 3 years ago could still play games without AA/AF. All it would need is a 6800GS AGP for $200. If anything, software has been too slow to take advantage of current hardware (esp cpus). As a result, the longevity of most hardware has increased imo (not so much the graphics card though). Even with graphics cards you do not see many jumping ship to X1900XTX cards. Back in the days, you'd be lucky if mid-range current generation card would play Quake 3 or unreal tournament. Also performance increases from Geforce 2 -> 3 -> 4 were far from double. X800XT PE more than doubled 9800Pros performance and today X1900XTX is almost as fast as 7800GT SLI. If something can be taken away here is that you don't need top of the line to have a gaming rig. In fact, you could be better off getting 2x $250 cards once every 1.5 years as opposed to holding top of the line $500 card for 3 years.
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