As you may have noticed, RAM prices have dropped sharply over the past few months. Turns out that it's a good idea to "buy low, sell high", to quote a familiar stock market tip. The prices are only temporary, and as Vista really gets popular among consumers, and as prices get too low to compensate for manufacturing costs, manufacturers will simply raise prices again. Expect to see prices go back to "normal" during the second half of 2007. In the meantime, feel free to buy plenty of RAM while prices are still low and reasonable.

A recent survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project has revealed that 34% of internet users in America have used wireless networking to access online material, with 27% of users accessing the net outside their own homes. The survey has also shown that 20% of users have wireless networks at home, which has doubled from last year. This is the result of more shops and public areas offering wireless services (and even entire cities) and increased consumer awareness - one interesting discovery is that wireless internet users check their emails more than those with wired connections.

Ever wonder how much profit companies are making on your purchases? Have you considered building products from parts, and saving a lot of money? Or are there some things where the company selling the product is at a loss?

Business Week has posted an article about how much profit or loss companies like Microsoft, Sony and Apple are making on their products - definitely worth a read here.

While Apple seems to be making a profit on all of its products, Microsoft and Sony are both at a loss with their gaming consoles - we must remember, however, that most of the money will come from the games purchased for the consoles.

When the Sony PlayStation 3 was released to the United States, people queued for days, and even shot each other over the next generation console from Sony. Sony has managed to ship 1 million PS3s to the United States, however, people just aren't buying them. Some people blame the high price of the console, others blame a rather lackluster collection of launch titles. Whatever the reason is, the PS3 simply isn't doing well right now. While PS3s are filling space on store shelves, the Nintendo Wii has become very successful, due to having reasonably good supply, a low price, an interesting controller, and a great set of launch titles.

A recent study by retail analysis group NPD, which consisted of putting tracking software on a group of 12,500 volunteers, has found that video piracy is a lot more common than initially thought. Only 2/10 people downloading video got it from a legitimate source such as Apple, and the other 8/10 downloaded from P2P networks. The study also found that 60 percent of video files downloaded from P2P sites were pornographic, 20 percent were television shows and 5 percent were mainstream movie content. There are several good reasons behind the high amount of piracy, however. There is a much larger volume of content available on P2P networks, there are no DRM's to stop someone from converting the video to a different format and/or burning it to DVD, illegal videos are generally of higher quality, and P2P doesn't cost anything.