Upgrading
I can’t remember exactly when I bought my first desktop computer, but I think it was around fifteen years ago.
Boy, how things have changed!
My first machine was a Tandon 386, with 1Mb of RAM and a massive 40Mb hard disk. It had the standard 5.25” floppy drive, but I spent a little extra and got a 3,25” floppy as well. I was forward thinking!
I have just taken delivery of a 2Tb external drive which is hooked up now to my laptop, along with a slightly unreliable 1Tb drive. I have just been doing the maths on how this humble little laptop compares to my first machine.
The memory has grown from 1Mb to 4Gb, which is 4,000 times more.
The storage has grown from 40Mb to 3.35Tb which is an increase factor of 83750!!
The laptop has a 2Gh dual core processor compared to my old 16Mh Tandon which is the poorest improvement – a mere 128 times faster.
I haven’t seen a floppy drive in years, nor have I seen a floppy disk. This yoke is DVDs (and CDs) only.
Of course the display and sound have improved beyond recognition too.
But by how much has the price increased in the fifteen years?
I actually paid about half the original cost on my current setup. Allowing for inflation, I have spent considerably less.
Not bad. huh?
In 1994 I persuaded my parish that the Amstrad 8256, which I had been using since 1988, produced a very poor quality parish magazine. They spent £880 Stg on a PC with, I think, capacity fairly similar to yours. Without even allowing for inflation, £880 is around €1,050 – imagine what you would get for a thousand now!
I can’t remember exctly what I paid, but I’m fairly sure it was around the £IR 1,300 mark, which would be around €1,800. You could get a very fancy kit for that and still have a load of change!!