MARK DB (of Minute Particulars fame) writes about the Newsweek blog article I mentioned earlier:
A two-year old $400 computer? That got me thinking: a free web host with Blogspot, a free blog template, a few bucks for blogger Pro . . . you seem to be the Anti-Kaus in not selling out or putting any monetary investment into InstaPundit. I’m sure that you have the lowest overhead of any of the Blogger Big Guns. Doesn’t Sullivan have an intern or two? And NRO must have a gaggle of support folks. I think your financial nonchalance speaks volumes about what blogging was and still can be. Maybe you should put the Blogger banner back and lower the bar even further?
Well, I wouldn’t even try to match Kaus’s megabucks operation. What makes it even better is that the $400 computer is . . . an eMachine! I may actually upgrade soon, but I have to say that (for me at least) the low-budget DIY esthetic has always had a lot of appeal. One of InstaPundit’s roles has been to show that anybody can do this stuff. And I think I’ve accomplished that. Heck — I get email with, ahem, variations on that theme all the time!
As one journalist said to me: “Your site’s a pure content play, right? I mean, there isn’t really anything else to draw people there.” Nope, there’s not.
UPDATE: Virginia Postrel writes to ask what about the laptop I bought with the tipjar money last fall. I use it, too — but Levy asked what computer I did the majority of my posts from, and that’s this one. It’s the one with the DSL connection. I often blog from the laptop upstairs, and of course I post from my office sometimes too, but there’s no doubt that the majority of my posts come from this eMachine. It also handles audio processing (mastering, etc.) quite capably — though it’s got a soundcard/breakout box combo from Echo that is worth more than the computer to help with those tasks.
A decade or two ago, of course, they’d have called it a “supercomputer.” But it just underscores what Stewart Brand said back in the early 1980s: a personal computer is a communications device, first, second and third.