Contact Sources Prices keep dropping--giving you more computer than ever for your money.

The price of a computer setup capable of performing standard office tasks has remained remarkably stable over the years. For close to $2,500, you can get a desktop computer and monitor. Another $400 will get you an adequate printer.

"Wait a minute," you may be thinking, "aren't prices constantly dropping?" True, but at the same time, people's standards for a desktop system have risen dramatically.

Ten years ago, a top-of-the-line system consisted of a 16 MHz, 286-based PC with 256K RAM and a 20MB hard drive. You then added a 16-color graphics monitor and a dot-matrix printer. Such a system was more than adequate to run the DOS-based word processing, spreadsheet and database applications of the time.