Rich by chance

Movie tickets
With the rise of the multiplex sub culture prices of movie tickets hit the roof with weekend shows for a family of four costing enough to feed the entire family for a month. However this is another one of the members of the,first expensive now cheap family,as even multiplexes have reduced ticket fares for movies. Sheela Menon a regular moviegoer says,“A weekend movie at the multiplexes can do some serious damage to one’s budget if you are still in college. Luckily nowadays they have the early morning shows priced in a range of Rs 40-60,which does not dent the pocket a lot. However it would be really cool if they reduce their prices for all the shows everyday,but maybe in today’s times that is like asking for a miracle to happen.”

MP3 Players
The MP3 revolution took the world by storm when apple launched the yet-to-be-conquered Apple I-Pod player with the revolutionary Jog Dial feature. True,it took a long time for the price of that player to come down as far as India is concerned but then it did come down eventually and along with it came down the prices of the other brands of players. R Shivalik,a techie says,“I recently purchased the Apple I-pod shuffle that cost me just Rs 1800 rupees. However,a couple of days later,one of my other friends purchased a non-branded player for just Rs 900. While the quality may not be the same,the price difference can surely play a major role if one is shopping on a shoestring budget.”

Laptops
The laptop is another item whose price has fallen steeply over the past few years. “The main reason for the prices of laptops coming down was first,the technology that goes behind making them cheaper,and second,the wide array of options that the customer had. As of today,some of the cheaper models of laptops are from the Lenovo,HCL,Acer and HP stables. Laptops usually boast of basic features and lack optical drives for CD players. The only buyers of these extremely basic laptops include students who need to use inexpensive and affordable laptops for their daily use. The prices for these laptops range from Rs 18000-Rs 22500,” says Manish Limaye,who owns a Lenovo Showroom in Salisbury Park.

Pen-drives,memory cards,CDs
Joining the bandwagon of inexpensive technological paraphernalia are memory cards for mobile phones and music players,pen drives for mass data storage and compact diskettes for storing important data. “When the mass memory storage devices first hit the stores,even a 1GB thumb drive would cost as much as Rs 4000 and this was as recent as just six years back. However,now for a price of just over Rs 1000,you can easily purchase a 16 GB pen drive. Memory cards which were once very expensive can now be bought for Rs 200-300. A CD costs just Rs 10,” says a spokesperson for the Venus Traders superstore on F C Road.

Cellphones and recharge vouchers
One of the many things whose prices have fallen over the last decade is the mobile phone. The cellular phone is a gadget whose prices have not stood the test of time. As Sameer Desai who owns a mobile store in Camp puts it,“Some of the cheapest phones in the market include the Nokia 1202 handset,which is as cheap as Rs 1300. The Reliance Classic line is also cheap and comes for an even lower price of Rs 800.” In addition,mobile phone network subscribers have launched prepaid vouchers of as low as Rs 10 to woo the common people.