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By Graham K. Rogers With the end of the semester (that is my day job) looming, I have been heavily involved in work with students and the time for cruising the shops is almost nil. A dash in to Bangkok, grab some sheets, buy some supplies and dash home is my schedule currently. Although I had the price lists on Saturday, with crowds of students at home all weekend with their last minute panics on papers -- why do these guys leave everything till the last minute -- I did not look at them until late Sunday night; and that was mainly because I am moving towards buying a new iMac for myself: that faithfull, not-miss-a-beat eMac is slow these days. I may retire it to my office as a mail and surfing machine. My immediate reaction was to access the last Bangkok Diary item and compare. Price drops for Macs are fairly significant. I am not wholly sure why this is but there are two possibilities, especially as far as the iMacs are concerned: end of line. There are rumours that new iMacs are coming and there are now reductions of around 4 - 6,000 baht for the iMacs. There is also the baht to consider. This has been strengthening against the dollar for a long time -- when I first started writing the eXtensions columns it was around 42 baht for $1. It stayed that way for a long time, but now it is about 31 baht and still rising. Perhaps we will return to the rate that existed when I first arrived here, and was maintained by the Bank of Thailand artifically, of 25 baht. The effect of currency is reinforced by the prices of the MacBookAir. This is not liklely to be end of line. The 1.8GHz version with the hard disk is now also listed -- previously it had been the basic 1.6GHz machine and the 1.8GHz with the solid state drive only. In addition, the MacBooks, which have just been updated are also showing price drops along with the MacBookPro range. However these are not the latest versions announced some days ago. There are reductions here of up to 20,000 baht making the 2.4GHz 17" MacBookPro a bargain at 88,900 baht when I previously had it shown as 105,900 baht. The iPod shuffle has dropped in price by about 1,000 baht, reflecting the change in US pricing, although this does not meet the price of $49 (before taxes). The 2G shuffle is not yet listed. None of the other iPods has changed in price according to the data I have.
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