Vista/Gaming Box, Part Oops

myDigitechnician just received a reminder there are no guarantees in life or in the world of computer parts. The reminder came in the form of a $50 hike in the price of the RAM for the Vista/Gaming box being planned.

The enduring mantra of computers and computer parts is that they keep getting more powerful and less expensive. Over the long run, that has been proven to be a truism. The short run is another matter. There are no guarantees that each week the price of a computer part will either be the same or lower. It's easy to get in the frame of mind that if you just wait a little longer, the price will go down.

Due to oversupply, production outages, unexpectedly high consumer demand and other vagaries of the personal computer market, there have been and will continue to be both increases and decreases for computer parts in the short term. A close eye has been kept on the prices of 2 GB of Mushkin RAM for the Vista/Gaming box myDigitechnician would like to build in the next couple weeks, as well as on the other parts. The RAM price had been holding steady around $175 for a few weeks. Shockingly, when the price was checked this morning, it had shot up to $225. Ouch. They can't do that, can they??

Apparently they can. Now the only question is, do we buy the RAM now before it goes up more, or do we wait to see if it goes back down? If we want to wait for another three months, or six months, chances are pretty good the RAM price will go back down. Although, with the amount of RAM that Vista is going to start sucking up shortly, RAM prices may jump up a bunch further because of high demand.

Can we go back a couple days? Just long enough for me to place that order. Hmmm...should we order the video card and motherboard now, too?

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