As a long-time technology buyer, I'm used to seeing new products come out at lower prices than the lesser model I had purchased merely a couple of years previous. For instance, my trusty Olympus C-3030 3.2 megapixel digital camera, which I bought a year ago for $1000, is being bested by the new 5 megapixel Olympus C-5050, which comes out November 11 with a sticker price of $799. New multi-memory-type support (XD, SmartMedia, CompactFlash and Microdrive are all supported), the obvious bump in resolution, a new tilting LCD monitor, and a hot-shoe for an external flash with slave strobe support all make me desperate to trade up.

While I'm less eager to get a new laptop computer, the price/quality differences are even more impressive: I purchased my Dell Inspiron 8000 (Pentium 3 800MHz, 256MB RAM, 20GB 4400 RPM hard drive) for $3800 (*shudder*) in 2001, and a new Inspiron 8200 (Pentium 4 1.8GHz, 512MB RAM, 40GB 5400RPM hard drive) with similar accessories, which I'd say is at least three times as good for most applications, today costs $2700. Oy.