A year back, you saw PC-makers slashing prices. You rushed in and booked yourself a PC, congratulating yourself on your market-savviness. But you had barely enough time to figure out the black box before the PC people did it again. Cut prices, that is. You cursed yourself for hastily buying a PC when a little waiting would have fetched you a better box with more power and more freebies to boot. Next time, you tell yourself, you will wait for the right time to buy.

You can wait and gnash your teeth, but it's no use. PC prices are close to bottoming out. Thanks to lower duties and easy imports, the real price declines are happening not in nominal terms, but in terms of power.

It's not that you can't get any price bargains anymore; the August-September and February-March periods are two times when PC makers try to push sales volumes by wooing companies with little giveaways and depreciation benefits.

However, no big price cuts are likely in future. Says the vice president of a leading hardware organisation: ``The basic cost of manufacturing a microprocessor or other computer system will not come down. But for the same cost, chip/system manufacturers can increase the speed''.

In March, the cost of a Pentium 133 Mhz PC was in the region of Rs 50,000. Now an even more powerful PC in the shape of the 166 Mhz Pentium, powered by chipmaker Intel's multimedia extension (MMX) technology, costs the same.

Similarly, the Pentium 100 was available in January for the same price as the Pentium 133 Mhz in March. The price isn't changing much, but manufacturers are delivering more bang for the buck. That is more, processing power, more memory, more disk space.

Duties, which once played a crucial role in the pricing of PCs, are being brought down to more acceptable levels. A fully assembled PC faces only a 20 per cent customs duty, which retailers say is reasonable.

The duties on peripherals, which include printers, are the same as that for computers. The basic customs duty on most components is fixed at 10 per cent. These include floppy disk drives, CD-ROM drives, hard disks, and the microprocessor chip.

There is some scope for duties to fall further. India has agreed to cut customs duties under the Information Technology Agreement over the next few years. But few industry insiders are betting on any big price fall as a result.

Says HCL-HP's senior marketing manager Sharad Talwar: "There will not be any significant impact on PC pricing due to the lowering of import duties as companies are constantly upgrading their products." Adds a senior official of Eagle Information System, which is a reseller for Digital hardware: "If an individual waits for a few months he can purchase an advanced computer for the same price.

But it's the cost of opportunity (that counts)." Eagle has been constant purchase orders irrespective of the increase or decrease in PC prices.One can expect an occasional price cut depending on the international demand-supply situation for certain components. The chip and the hard disk account for nearly 35 per cent of PC costs.

So, any change in either technology or supply effects the pricing of the final product. Last year, Seagate shifted its hard disk manufacturing facility in Singapore which caused a shortage of hard disks and pushed up the prices of the product in the region.

Hard disk prices now range between $ 145 (Rs 5,220) to $ 157(Rs 5,652) for 1.2 GB, while the 2.1 GB type costs between $ 172 (Rs 6,192) and $ 178 (Rs 6,408).

Internationally, there have been price cuts in CD-ROM (compact disc-read only memory) and monitors. The prices for 16-speed systems have come down from $ 105 (Rs 3,780) to $ 80 Rs (2,880) while those for 14-inch SVGA colour monitors have come down from $ 190 (Rs 6,840) to $ 175 (Rs 6,300) over the last three months. The prices indicated are international prices and do not include the duties, local taxes and margins which are added to arrive at the cost price in India.

Once you have decided to buy a PC, you have three choices: one, you can go to a small-timer retailer, but this is a risky option. If it is your first buy, drop the idea. Two, you can approach one of the `genuine Intel dealers' and other `organised players'.

Your third option is to buy one of the branded biggies, including the desi heavyweights and MNCs. For systems costing above Rs 1 lakh, it is always better to go for a branded product. But if it is below that figure, both the second and third options are good enough.

All important components like the chip, the hard disk, and the multimedia systems are imported-so there is not much of a quality difference. The MNCs charge more for their design and brandname.

A word of caution here. If a small-timer offers you a really exciting PC with a dozen freebies, beware!. The speed of the processors could be less than what is claimed in the product literature.

Manufacturers in China and Hong Kong routinely remove the markings on processors and remark them to show a chip of higher capacity. An Intel 75 Mhz processor could be passed off as a 150 Mhz model and you would have no way of checking the facts. One should insist on a check to test the speed of the processor before you purchase the PC. Ditto for CD-ROM speeds.

The price of a good multimedia machine is not likely to come down below Rs 50,000, say retailers. The configuration for this would be a 166Mhz processor, a 2.1 GB hard disk (external memory), 16 MB of RAM, a 14-inch colour monitor, and a 12-speed multimedia kit.

A system with this kind of configuration is enough to cater to all multimedia requirements. Most PCs which are sold with these specifications come bundled with the Windows '95 operating system and a couple of free CD titles. Most of the other software has to be purchased by the buyer.

For stripped down PCs, costs can start at a low of Rs 20,000. The costs gradually increase depending on the features. At the top-end, costing nearly Rs 1.5 lakh and above for the home market, are the multimedia PCs with high processor speed, crystal clear sound and pacy graphics.

Multimedia PCs combine visuals with sound and text. These PCs are of greater use to a professional than a housewife or for children. Since new techonologies make it possible to send faxes from PCs and create multimedia presentations, they are indispensible for professionals.

Thanks to large scale advertising by Intel and other major PC manufacturers customers are more hungup on power than practical considerations. But it's worth remembering that you don't need a 166 Mhz Pentium for writing a script or playing games.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.