Hard drives are generally pretty cheap nowadays, so I'd think it would be more like 1-2 weeks of pay for a minimum wage earner, perhaps even 1-2 days pay for someone doing technical work. But even still, your point is valid.
Ok, this is anecdotal, but it paints a picture I'm familiar with in a sub-Saharan African country on the lower end of the development index.
A former colleague of mine, doing network hardware + infra installations presently earns $200-300 a month, and lives in a township. That's more than triple what we earned when I worked with him in the early 90s, here's his situation:
1/ After expenses he has not enough to buy even the cheapest hard-disk on the market, not when 100% duties on luxury goods (computers count as this) are imposed. So, yep, it's a project that warrants saving for.
2/ He can program in Perl, Bash, KSH and C, has a good understanding of Linux, FreeBSD + the extinct Unices (SCO, etc), the last I spoke to him he was learning several others. He has never held a job using any of those skills, and doesn't call him self a programmer.
3/ He has a computer, it's a laptop that was going to be trashed considered beyond repair that he repaired, and he leaves it at his workplace, because he can't afford to replace it and in the township theft is a certainty at some point. He arrives at work at 6am and, if he's anything like I remember, leaves at after 10pm, because that's where his computer is.
4/ He's given up trying to emigrate, because as long you intend to do things legally and you don't hold relevant university degrees, it's impossible. And none of us geeks that were in our lates teens/early twenties in that period do - there were no meaningful compsci courses. His only qualification is something to do with agriculture, which was the topic de jour of the era.
Why is his story relevant? Because he's the only one of the aforementioned Afican geeks of that generation still unlucky enough to be there. The rest of us all left. And if he had the correct degrees, or was lucky enough to have an opportunity, he too would be long gone.
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Hard drives are generally pretty cheap nowadays, so I'd think it would be more like 1-2 weeks of pay for a minimum wage earner, perhaps even 1-2 days pay for someone doing technical work. But even still, your point is valid.
Ok, this is anecdotal, but it paints a picture I'm familiar with in a sub-Saharan African country on the lower end of the development index.
A former colleague of mine, doing network hardware + infra installations presently earns $200-300 a month, and lives in a township. That's more than triple what we earned when I worked with him in the early 90s, here's his situation:
1/ After expenses he has not enough to buy even the cheapest hard-disk on the market, not when 100% duties on luxury goods (computers count as this) are imposed. So, yep, it's a project that warrants saving for.
2/ He can program in Perl, Bash, KSH and C, has a good understanding of Linux, FreeBSD + the extinct Unices (SCO, etc), the last I spoke to him he was learning several others. He has never held a job using any of those skills, and doesn't call him self a programmer.
3/ He has a computer, it's a laptop that was going to be trashed considered beyond repair that he repaired, and he leaves it at his workplace, because he can't afford to replace it and in the township theft is a certainty at some point. He arrives at work at 6am and, if he's anything like I remember, leaves at after 10pm, because that's where his computer is.
4/ He's given up trying to emigrate, because as long you intend to do things legally and you don't hold relevant university degrees, it's impossible. And none of us geeks that were in our lates teens/early twenties in that period do - there were no meaningful compsci courses. His only qualification is something to do with agriculture, which was the topic de jour of the era.
Why is his story relevant? Because he's the only one of the aforementioned Afican geeks of that generation still unlucky enough to be there. The rest of us all left. And if he had the correct degrees, or was lucky enough to have an opportunity, he too would be long gone.