Slashdot Mirror
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."
Has the Australian Dollar always been worth 70 to 80 US cents?
Slashdot Eds Link Anonymous Posts With Logged Posts
They Are Vermin Feeding On Each Other's Feces.
I Hate \.
considering money is just a symbolic representation of value, it seems reasonable that 8 megs was more valuable 20 years ago and cost a lot more money.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
Who keeps up with current prices? No your average person, that's for sure. Coming out of an era when the last computers purchased were $3000, convincing someone to pay $1200 for a Dell is not too difficult.
when you consider that programs were measured in hundreds of K back then.
Also like a lot of old-timers (in my 30's), I wax nostalgic for the days when you put in the disk, turned the computer on, and used your program. No DRM, no crashes (not as often as now, anyway), no spyware, no internet or solitaire or slashdot, no mysterious slow-down in your OS over a period of months (KDE, why do you do that????).
Then again, no powerbook, no OSX, no VMWare, no wifi or bluetooth, no Ruby (okay, well, there was Lisp and SmallTalk, that's true), no Zaurus linux workstation that fits in your pocket.
That stuff is cool but I really miss the simplicity and reliability.
"Time Warp Computer Pricing Revealed"
And yet the cost of computer magazines have gone up. $12 for a Linux magazine with a CD.
- The 8088 sucked. Z80 with better carburators.
//.) I was delighted to move from 68000->68040 without having to redesign software. Microcontroller makers passing them off as microprocessors.
- 4.77MHz.
I still find that my 30MHz Sparc 2 running fvwm wasn't a ton less useful than my current FreeBSD setup.Segments.
The 68000 came out soon after and would have spared us YEARS of working around stupid ickiness that Intel foisted on us (like bank switching which should have died with the Apple
Skipping predictive branching, caching up the kazoo and that current chips are closer to RISC than CISC classic, etc:
Is your 2000MHz Athlon 400 times more useful than the XT? (adding in variables, and DDR it's several THOUSAND times more powerful).
I *know* that my 40MHz NeXT (in the office) isn't 1/20th the speed of my 867MHz (RISC) PPC.
The issue with really fast systems is really bad and bloated software is allowed.
A C compiler, relational databse, and OS are such mature technology, I don't see paying much more for them than I would a screwdriver, 2x4, or plastic bag.
New stuff -- facial-expression-recognition-input-devices, 3D heads up displays, a computer that understands my mood -- that's what I'd be happy to pay for (open source or not).
A bit offtopic, but... Yes, technology is much cheaper now than in the dawn of computers... But think of all the monthly charges we've taken on as just a part of life. I can remember when all I paid were phone and electric bills... Now many of us pay $35 and up for a cell phone (on top of the land line), $30 and up for broadband, easily $50 and up for digital cable... And more.
When I started in this business in 1966, RAM cost $1 per bit. That's more than 25 million to 1 times more expensive than today's RAM.
More to the point, in those days a man-day of programmer's time was worth 2 or 3 bits of memory. Therefore one could justify several days of work to save a single byte. That economic was the cause of much of the often criticised spaghetti code from those days. Even when it was not true, the programmers believed that sharing a single line of code between more than one if-then-else clause was worth a month's pay.
Even today, writing for clarity as opposed to writing for performance is far from being universally accepted.
thats funny, I'd like to buy Linus a drink as well. Mostly becasue I'd like to swap a lot of NON computer stories. He seems like an interesting fellow.
I think stories about our kids would be far more interesting then talking to him about something he's already told 100000 people.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Is anyone surpised that hardware gets cheaper over time?
What really is surprising is that it continues to happen. There is nothing about the universe that guarantees cheaper and better products will be produced over time. It is only human cleverness that sustains this progress. That applies to most products.
"The issue with really fast systems is really bad and bloated software is allowed." To really get performance, run 20th century software on 21st century hardware. Now that's a performant system.
Since when are PCs and compatibles the only computers? Back in the 80s, HOME computers were quite cheap, on par with what we'd pay today for a commodity PC today.
;)
In 1983, you could get a complete Commodore 64 System (Montior and floppy drive included) for ~$730 US. Basically, everything you would need (word processing, games etc...)
20 years later, you'd be getting a very good deal to get a modern system for that price. Sure the technology is much more advanced today, but in the end you get the same amount done, for the same price.
Of course, let's not talk about modem prices
I seem to remember an old "law" that went something like "The computer you want will always cost $5000". I think it still pretty much holds true....
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
One word: Inflation