Time Warp Computer Pricing Revealed

Agg writes "OCAU has posted an article which shows just how much computer pricing has changed over the last 20 years or so. During a 24-hour period I asked OCAU readers to scan and send me an ad page from the oldest Australian computer magazine they could find. This snapshot of historical pricing is fascinating and, quite frankly, a little scary. How does $5999 for an 8.6MB hard drive strike you? For reference, 1 Australian Dollar is worth 70 to 80 US cents."

Comments

Re:And yet, little seems to have changed...

[JaredOfEuropa]

so it's not all that big of a difference

There is a big difference... The point is that it's not just that prices of individual bits of hardware are coming down, but overall prices as well, e.g. the price you can expect to pay for an average system.

My father's first computer was a self-built jobby and (for the time) top of the line. He must have spent $10.000 on that thing. With the advent of personal computers, prices dropped rapidly... and for a long, long time, it seemed that an average computer would cost about $1500 or so. The last 5 years or so, this price has come down. Check out Dell... they're offering a system for as low as $500 (and even throw in a printer). A few $100 more and you'll have a decent home computer suitable even for games (no, not Doom3 at 20 million fps of course).

If all you do is surfing, word processing, spreadsheets, and the occasional game, then you can get something good for about $750. Computers certainly weren't that cheap 5-10 years ago.

Re:Each one bigger than all previous ones

[untaken_name]

Not only that, but each new drive has been bigger than all the previous ones put together!
- Your post

Every hard drive I've bought has been bigger than every previous hard drive I've bought combined.
- Post you replied to

Hi! My name is Reading Comprehension. I see you haven't made my acquaintance. Nice to meet you.