Laptop computer prices have come down and down.

Richard Shim, research manager at IDC, a San Mateo, Calif., firm that gathers market intelligence on the consumer technology market, says the decline has been at an average rate of $200 over the last four years. I can't think of any other consumer good that's knocked so much off its price.

But those fast falling days may be coming to an end. His prediction: Look for price cuts of half as much in the near future. The reason is that the raw materials in laptops such as nickel, cobalt and resin, have risen dramatically.

Computer-makers won’t be able to absorb the cost increases much longer.
The thing is, he’s not predicting laptop prices will go up. Just stop going down as rapidly.

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Livin' on less for the long-term, do you think this is the way we'll be?
Someone called it the Costco effect. Once you realize you can buy it -- whatever it is -- for less than you used to pay for it, why would you ever pay more?
If they sell Dom Perignon at Costco as well as at a full-priced liquor store, why pay more?
We've been forced, by this economy and by wages that haven't kept pace with local inflation, to find ways to live on less.
Other forces are pushing us this way as well.
The desire or trend to live simply, to find the simple way to get something done.
The trend toward being green, to have as little impact on the environment as possible.
Now that being frugal is in style, I find people almost bragging on how little we can spend.

Is frugal the new normal?

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I know you’ve planned to buy this and buy that with your tax refund. You have a few things you want to do with your economic stimulus rebate check, too.

Let’s call this psychological spending.

It very quickly becomes overspending.

Maybe it’s because you don’t actually have the money yet, but you make one plan for it, then you make another. Somehow, you never add all the sums up. Because if you did, you’d know you were planning to spend $500 of that $300 rebate. So you never do the math and you go on making plans that will soon overwhelm the amount you’re about to get from your friends in Washington, D.C.

No, I have no intellectual back-up for this thought.

I just know people do it. I hear them. “When I get that refund, I’m going to…."

And they say people don’t make financial plans. We do. We just make too many of them, for money that’s never enough.

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