> had to spend a lot of money on getting things

When I was at IBM's Watson lab, the PC on my desk had parts worth a total of $50,000+.

When I bought my first PC at home, from Gateway, it cost me $10,000+. Single core, 90 MHz clock.

Later a friend and I considered a startup, I went shopping, and saw that parts for a good PC would run ballpark $6,000 -- we didn't do the startup!

Later I wanted a more up to date PC, and the parts cost about $5000. So, single core 1.8 GHz processor, that is 1800 / 90 = 20 times faster for half as much money.

Now I'm shopping for the first server for my startup. I've been assuming that the parts would cost about $2000. Nope: How about $1000, for a processor with 8 cores, at 4.0 GHz, with 32 GB of ECC main memory, etc.

But I already have a spare screen and power supply, now really want to do backup from one hard disk to another, both internal, and to a 2 TB external hard disk via USB so don't need Blu-Ray.

And good 1 TB hard disks go for about $60 and, thus, make room enough for internal disk to disk backup surprisingly cheap and easier than working with Blu-Ray disks.

And main memory prices are significantly lower: E.g., the Kingston, 32 GB of 1600 MHz ECC main memory

KVR16E11K4/32

was $429 but now is easy enough to find for $230.99, nearly half price.

So, $700 gets such an 8 core box.

But, for my first server, really not sure I need the full 8 cores, 32 GB of main memory right away so could settle for 4 cores with a slightly slower clock and 16 GB of main memory and three disk drives 1 TB each, for under $400.

So, start with a $400 server and, if it stays busy sending Web pages with ads, then the ad revenue just from on the way to getting busy should be much more than needed for some high end servers.

And now 1 GbE IP routers are much cheaper, too!

And for $90 a month my ISP can give me a connection with a static IP address, no ports blocked, and upload bandwidth of 35 Mbps. Half fill that 24 x 7 sending Web pages with ads, and should be able to show a profit!

Several US locations have 1 GbE service!

Prices, they've been a coming down!

It used to be, to bring up a busy Web site, needed big bucks to, say, Sun and maybe a T3 leased line, etc.

Now nearly everything about bringing up a Web site is much easier and cheaper than 10-15 years ago.

E.g., my startup is based on Windows, so I get to use IIS and ASP.NET for the Web site, ADO.NET and SQL Server for the data base, parts of the rest of .NET for more, e.g., de/serialization of instances of classes for program to program communications over TCP/IP sockets. Some big sites use this infrastructure; it should work well enough for my startup!

E.g., I wrote my own Web site session state server key-value store using TCP/IP sockets, de/serialization, and two instances of a .NET collection class. The .NET collection class was great fun to use! Terrific infrastructure.

Much easier, cheaper than 10-15 years ago!