And a 13" color monitor was $200, and the 1541 floppy disk drive was another $160.
Even if you just bought the Commodore cassette deck and connected the computer up to your existing television, you were looking at $200 for a usable configuration.
Walmart will sell you a Lenovo Ideapad 130s (laptop with a 14" LCD, dual-core Celeron, 4GB RAM and 64GB solid-state storage) for $189.
Even if you just bought the Commodore cassette deck and connected the computer up to your existing television, you were looking at $200 for a usable configuration.
Yes, that would be a basic configuration. Disk drives and color monitors are luxuries if we're talking about the lowest of low end here. In fact, the C64 is a bad example because it was not the cheapest system available, and many other low-end systems allowed you to use the standard cassette deck you already had as storage.
The point is: Yes, you're right, a basic computer is cheaper today, but the price is roughly comparable and not anywhere near the realm of "unattainable except through years of saving up".
Other machines on the market such as the Atari 800 cost $899
Not in 1985, it didn't. The 800 is a machine from 1979. In 1985 a contemporary machine would be the Atari 65XE for $120.
Yes, it's true that home computers were subject to a pricing war and margins were slim. I don't think margins are very beefy on the cheapest low-end laptops in 2020 either.
A C64 was $149 in 1985.