10 years ago
8
10 vintage computer reviews from the dawn of technology
Before the slick Apple ads, we had these vintage ads, as seen in Byte Magazine between 1975 and 1986.
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Bragging about 4KB of memory. I have 32GB in my PC right now, 35 years later. 8x10^6 more. Wow.
Plus, people in 20 years will say the same of us.
Exciting times to live in :D.
Young whippersnappers think 1975 was the "dawn of technology"!?
My gaming machine costed about $2,300, including the price tag of the 27" 1440p monitor. It has an i7 4790k, 16GB RAM and a Radeon R9 290X. With all that and it costs little more than half what the original PC costed in 1981.
I asked Wolfram Alpha to adjust it to todays money and I almost chocked with the answer... North of $11,000 !!! Yes, if the original PC were on sale today, it would cost eleven thousand Dollars !
We're talking about a chip that had 29,000 transistors versus one with 1,400,000,000 plus the ones on the GPU, 34 years apart. and the new system costs 1/5 the price.
Damn, we moved fast in those 30 years!
Yet somehow a TI-83 is still $130.
That's due to the lack of competition, there are very few brands making calculators that are allowed in high schools.
All I marvel at nowadays relative to my own computing history is how CCleaner regularly clears from my laptop's SSD junk that is at least a couple times the total disk space my Mac had in 1995.
In the late 70s, I was a computer operator in the US Air Force. The base computer was a Burroughs B3500 with core memory (640k I think). With peripherals such as a punch card reader, card punch, printer, disk drives, and a printer, it took up a room about 1200 square feet. I am amazed at how computers have increased in power while shrinking in size. I now carry way more computing power than that B3500 in my pocket (smartphone).
You can get a watch with more computing power than the B3500.