Your next laptop or desktop upgrade is going to be even more expensive than projected, and then costs are still going to climb. What a time for a sensibly priced MacBook.

The ides of March continue with the strikes of Qatar's gas production infrastructure having an unintended consequence of eliminating from the market about a third of the helium in the global supply chain.

While local space rock miners Renergen (now under the stewardship of ASP Isotopes - but still yet to make good on a helium delivery from the Vredefort dome) say they're four months ahead of schedule in phase one of the Virginia Project, it is still a smidgen of what is needed for full-speed microprocessor production.

Technology is getting expensive for reasons outside the control of us mere consumers. "We've just experienced 102% price increase quarter on quarter in the component price of memory plus SSD," Werner Joubert, country head for Asus South Africa, explained to Daily Maverick.

His philosophical Apple counterpart in our market, iStore CEO Chris Dodd, had fewer hard numbers to share in a similar interview, but did say that "margins are super tight across all hardware retail".

Hurry up and buy

The two business leaders are fresh off the launch parade for the respective Asus ExpertBook Ultra (R60,000 recommended retail price) and MacBook Neo (R12,000 for the base configuration), which both reached SA...