The price of technology

Today, a professionally made, all-in-one package will cost you at LEAST $7000. If you make it yourself, a decent system will cost $3000. Why so much? Well, the computer industry still hasn't seen the light on this one, and no one is going for the economics of scale...yet. However, a good reality check at how cheap these devices may become is Nintendo's VirtuaBoy which weighs in with two heads-up displays, a 32 bit RISC computer, and the controller interface for under $200. Don't get too excited about reverse engineering the VirtuaBoy though. The displays are lower resolution than what you need for text and the video signal is really more like a serial interface. For more information, see How to strip a virtual-boy.

Last modified: Wed Mar 15 17:28:35 1996