Having worked in the memory chip business for 10 years: It&#x27;s cheap!! Hell, for a while, companies were dumping memories below cost.<p>I remember a Fry&#x27;s newspaper ad that said something like: &quot;$50 1GB DIMM, $0 after in-store discount. (Limit 2 per customer.)&quot;<p>Kind of similar to the old (and possibly apocryphal) Sun Microsystems legend: Frustrated that too many domestic programmers were spoiled with ample CPU speeds, they hired a bunch of Russian programmers who dealt with the export restrictions on computing gear and thus had learned to write tight, elegant code.