“Dell's cheapest computer costs $379 (with a monitor) … in another five years, computers will be one-fourth their current price.” —Jakob Nielsen
Created by gwern on 2010-08-11; known on 2011-11-20; judged wrong by gwern on 2011-11-20.
- gwern estimated 20% on 2010-08-11
- gwern said “Nielsen specifies monitor and hence a desktop computer; when judging I will exclude netbooks and smartphones. Doubt Dell even bother with a $100 desktop!” on 2010-08-11
- gwern said “http://wrongtomorrow.com/prediction/id/95 http://www.useit.com/alertbox/digital-divide.html ” on 2010-08-11
- kallman estimated 5% and said “Prices decrease, but at a certain threshold they start shipping better stuff as a baseline. No matter how cheap, don’t see 4 gig hard drives anymore.” on 2010-11-23
- gimpf estimated 15% and said “I disagree with your exclusion of netbooks/tablets, as those will be sufficiently full-scale computers then, and many prefer them to PCs. But be it.” on 2010-12-13
- fergus estimated 5% on 2011-09-05
- Jayson Virissimo said “Best Buy had a sale on the Dell Inspiron laptop (with monitor) for $320 last time I was there. “Computer” is underspecified. A “PC” has several “computers” in it.” on 2011-10-20
- Jayson Virissimo said “Also, my smartphone is approximately 14x more powerful than my first desktop computer, has a higher resolution screen, and has an internet connection that is over 100x faster. Also, it could less than 1/3 of the price.” on 2011-10-20
- Jayson Virissimo estimated 1% on 2011-10-31
- NathanMcKnight said “If Nielsen didn’t specifically exclude notebooks or laptops (which at the time would have seemed likelier to be even more expensive than desktops), then why should we? I’d say this prediction has passed already with flying colors. ” on 2011-11-12
- gwern said “compare like to like. he didn’t say palmtops or cellphones would be as powerful as his current desktop, and those still aren’t as usable in any case.” on 2011-11-20
- gwern said “cheapest $300: https://www.dell.com/us/p/desktops# not $100. marking wrong.” on 2011-11-20
- gwern judged this prediction wrong on 2011-11-20.