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

newsflash

[Anonymous Coward]

Hardware prices drop over time.

Re:newsflash

[ron_ivi]

Software too. Used to be you had to pay for an OS, or a C compiler, etc. Now $0 is a fair price.

Australian Dollar?

[dnahelix]

Has the Australian Dollar always been worth 70 to 80 US cents?

Re:Australian Dollar?

[MasterB(G)ates]

10 year performance of the Aussie dollar compared to The Yank

http://www.ela.co.nz/CurrencyGraph.class.php?ela__ relative=AUD&ela__base=USD&UmsSession=6ef5cf65e96f 39657787d73633e3de9c

Re:Australian Dollar?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Government *wants* it to fall (good for exports), but it all depends on the economy in the rest of the world. The US economy has been in a bit of a rut lately, so they have low interest rates to stimulate the economy. Much of the rest of the world is in a similar position. On the other hand, Australia's economy has been steady, so interest rates are high by international standards. As a result, investors put their money into Australia to get better returns. This drove the dollar up.

Once the interest rates elsewhere rise, money will flow out of Australia, driving the AUD down. So, I guess all you can hope for is US interest rate rises.

The current position of the AUD at 70 cents is actually pretty close to its long-term stable position, but I have a gut feeling that when rate rises occur in the US, it will dip back down to the 60 cent mark (I could be wrong though).

Re:Australian Dollar?

[tarunthegreat2]

Oh For the love of God, get an education in economics. Currencies don't really represent the strength of your economy, they're a measure of a lot of other things (of course, if your currency is tanking by more 10%, I think it's safe to say the economy is bad). Currencies that float mostly represent trade imbalances. The middle eastern currencies are almost worth 2 US$ - hint:The world depends on the middle east for a critical resource...
If you want your country to export more, you try and devalue your currency, if you want to reduce inflation, your currency may start rising, blah blah. Currency and economic strength are not always directly related.

reasonable

[schneidafunk]

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.

How

[Julian Morrison]

...does $5999 for an 8.6MB hard drive strike you?

As silly. I mean, why didn't they want that one more dollar?

Hard Drives

[Brainix]

Every hard drive I've bought has been bigger than every previous hard drive I've bought combined. (40 MB, 200 MB, 2 GB, 4 GB, 20 GB.)

I hope my children will be able to make similar claims.

not *that* amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Cost of hard drive space over time

[calvrak]

The Historical Notes about the Cost of Hard Drive Storage Space website has an incredible list of the cost per megabyte and then cost per gigabyte over the history of storage.

Someone else pointed out that the price of computers never really change, but that there is more power for the same price. In 1987 our family computer (mid-range) and printer cost around $1200. Today the same amount of money will also buy a mid-range computer (at least for gaming). However, this idea is getting less and less true as computers become commoditized and "powerful enough".

Re:I still remember 8088 was hot

[MrChuck]

1. The 8088 sucked. Z80 with better carburators.
   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 //.) I was delighted to move from 68000->68040 without having to redesign software. Microcontroller makers passing them off as microprocessors.
2. 4.77MHz.
   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 still find that my 30MHz Sparc 2 running fvwm wasn't a ton less useful than my current FreeBSD setup.

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.