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"Like you said, off topic -- but it does show that computers are now commodities."

Ill go you one better...virtually all the consumer electronic products we use are now becoming commodities.

The consumer electronics market...if trends continue...will be virtually carved up by a number of Asian / Chinese companies.

Lenovo and a few other Chinese companies will eventually be manufacturing most of the PCs for global consumption. (Dell will be manufacturing in China) There may, however, be IBM chips in some of these computers...perhaps their high end servers.

Ive posted before about Flextronics...an engineering manufacturing service company. Simplified, their goal is to design and manufacture a $39 DVD player, or any other new commodity electronic product, using their own components and semiconductor chips (Chinese semiconductors)

Lets face it...this means that the developing nations that represent a future large global marketplace will be buying Chinese produced products, designed by a host of engineers from India, China, and Eastern Europe.

As I said...that IMHO is the trend here. What actually happens is dependent on a whole host of socio-political-economic factors that occur in the next few years...including China and her military intentions with Taiwan. At some point...many Americans may simply refuse to buy cheap Chinese goods. provided they are given a choice.

Being a lazy b@astard, I'm gonna ask you a favor. Could you post information/links about flextronics? I'm not aware of the firm, but I find the idea intriguing (not troubling, yet).

And for the record, I see $40.00 CD players for sell all the time at drug stores and on the street. Basically they're no name units in a blister pack. IMHO we're about a year away from seeing the MP3 players selling for $50 or less. They're all memory and aside from switches, have no moving parts.

However, I don't agree with your point that India, Chinese, etc. programming of these cheap electronics is inevitable. The U.S. can and should compete in this area. We just have to get our act together. Education, education, education!