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 (though this may be an artificial limitation by the software) 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