Your point on the inflatino-adjusted price is a good one. I'm less convinced about the other. The difference between a musical instrument and a laptop is that

Your point on the inflatino-adjusted price is a good one. I'm less convinced about the other. The difference between a musical instrument and a laptop is that the musical instrument may last 50 years or more. The laptop will be lucky to make five (for professional use). So yeah... it's worth it to pay for quality tooling to do your job, but depreciation has to be factored in, which is much higher for IT technology than almost anything else.