the good thing about ram prices going up
Computer hardware prices are skyrocketing right now. There are three specific types of hardware getting the most attention for pricing. RAM, CPUs and SSDs.
There is a good thing about the prices going up as fast as they are.
"Good? How?"
Don't worry, I'll tell you.
Whenever there's a shortage of pretty much anything in high demand, the end result is the unavoidable glut that happens afterward. The process is this:
- Thing in high demand has a shortage, whether a true shortage or manufactured.
- Prices for Thing skyrocket.
- Leading manufacturers of Thing and their competitors purposely overproduce Thing to cash in while the demand is high.
- Once everybody has Thing or people realize they really don't need Thing and find an alternative, people stop buying.
- Giant piles of Thing are now sitting in warehouses and have prices slashed by 50% to 80% or even more just to get rid of them.
The last one is the glut. It's not a matter of if that will occur but when.
Nobody ever knows when the glut will happen. Not even the manufacturers.
Right now, we're at the B and C point.
The glut hasn't happened yet, but it will.
How D happens is going to be interesting, because right now it's a situation of spending more to get less; this is why I put the "or" in D. Hiking up the price of tech makes people do something. They think.
How soon the glut happens all depends on how many people think.
It's one thing to be annoyed just from the use of tech, but if that also includes being directly hit in the wallet and paying more for less, then the thinking starts.
This thinking leads to a question, which is, "Do I really need this?" The moment that's asked, the answer has already been determined, and it's a no.
And that's when people stop buying. Shortly after that is when the glut begins, and that's the good part. Prices go through the floor, and then it's okay to buy again, conditionally. The condition is whether you can actually use the stuff or not. If you can, buy. If not, somebody else certainly will. Or it goes straight to e-waste. Whatever.
Stand pat? Go old?
Windows 10 works for now, but it's a liability because the rug can be pulled out from under it for major browser support at any moment.
Windows 11, even though a total dumpster fire, at least runs modern browsers... when it's not doing other dumb stuff.
Then there's Linux, which is my daily driver OS. I'll say again that I'm not telling anybody to switch to Linux. But concerning PC hardware, what I can do in a Linux environment is get the most out of it.
If it were possible to de-AI Windows 11, strip it all the way down to a Win2000 level, dump the online account "requirement", delete Microsoft Store, delete all Xbox trash, and replace the shell with something like LiteStep, it would be awesome. But that's never happening. The closest you'll get these days is Tiny11, but that's a powder keg.
Should you dare use Tiny11, this is a quote from their Limitations area:
For updates like bug fixing, it works fine, but for big updates, you may face issues, as it may break things completely.
...and that's not hyperbole. Like I said, Tiny11 is a powder keg. No way would I touch that.
On Linux, it is absolutely doable (and altogether far safer than Tiny11) to strip the environment down to an insanely lean level with a window manager like i3 or Sway. Or I can just go lightweight with Xfce or LXQt.
The leaner the environment, the more you get out of your PC hardware. More power can be dedicated to programs instead having it needlessly used just to support the GUI.
Ultimately, that means less needs to be spent on hardware. If all it takes to get everything running smooth and quick is a change of the OS, then you never needed to upgrade the PC hardware in the first place.
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Published 2026 Jan 19