I second that. The prices were very close. Internal upgrades were a lot cheaper than an external hard drive or cd-drive though. 2.5inch hard drives were also very pricey and only 4200rpm in speed.
The main problem was that escom folded and community carried onwards like a headless chook. Some people wanted 68k to continue, but we needed to move to a new cpu. PowerPc was chosen, but there was no heavyweight driving the ship.
Mac went to the brink too, but they marketed themselves back with a simple computer that could 'surf the net'.
If the price of the hardware wasn't a factor then it must have been software (and marketing).
