The Cutting Edge: COMPUTING / TECHNOLOGY / INNOVATION : Computers Becoming More Desirable, More Expensive

Yvette Marrin laughs when people suggest that interest in computers is going to level off.

As president of the National Cristina Foundation, a nonprofit group that matches companies that are throwing out old personal computers with individuals who want them, Marrin sees the hunger for computers every day.

“A bank called me yesterday and said they had 50 computers,” she said last week. “I will be placing those. It will take me five minutes.”

The foundation’s work illustrates a paradox that is overlooked in all the hype about technology: While the cost of computing power is constantly growing cheaper, new computers are no longer cheap. People who want low-cost computers generally have to buy used ones.

A decade ago, companies such as Tandy and Commodore offered new machines for $300 to $700. Some had to be attached to TVs and others had dim screens that held just a few lines of text, but they performed basic computing tasks such as word processing.

They eventually lost the market to IBM-compatible and Apple Macintosh computers. Then improvements to chips and software became routine, and the price range for new PCs solidified at between $1,000 and $3,000.

Now industry marketing, the economics of several component makers, and consumers’ desire for power and features have combined in a way that makes it unlikely that new computers will ever be as cheap as they once were.

“I believe that range will hold for some time to come,” said Safi Qureshey, chief executive of AST Research Inc., the nation’s sixth-largest PC maker. “The main reason is [that] the functionality a home user is seeking is continuing to increase.”

PC makers are already preparing for what is likely to be the next wave in consumer computing: homes with several devices that are networked together.

Slightly more than 39% of the nation’s households owned PCs in April, up from about 35% in April, 1994, according to Link Resources, a New York research firm. But the machines are predominantly in households with annual income far exceeding the national median of $32,000.

Link found that PCs are in 23% of households with income of $25,000 to $34,000, 30% of households with income of $35,000 to $45,000 and about half of households with income above $45,000.