[nunez]

Spot on.

Reading through IBM computer brochures and fooling around with the desktops and laptops in our local Costco were favorite past-times of mine.

Cheap desktops existed but were universally terri-bad. Low spec Celeron processors with anemic memory and disk space. They _just barely_ ran Windows and ground to a halt after most users got done installing their IE toolbars and some form of Office. (Remember when Office Professional was EXPENSIVE?!)

Cheap laptops didn't exist before netbooks. Like, they just _weren't_ things.

You can get an M4 MacBook Air these days for $999. A laptop that can do just about anything, including and up to CAD and photoshop work, for at least $1000 (today's prices, NOT today's real prices) less than a middling Thinkpad 600 that had maybe three hours of battery life and was good enough for word docs but not much else.