David Caulton over at Zunester (I site I often link to off Zune Thoughts) has put together a retro mish-mash of computer ads from circa 1989/1990. It’s amazing how far things have come in the past 15 years. Paying $2398 USD for a 33 mhz computer with 1 MB of RAM? Been there done that – when I was 18 years old, rather than get a loan to buy a used car like many of my friends, I took out a $3000 bank loan to buy a computer. Yeah, I was a geek. I’ll have to see if I can dig up the specs for that first machine…
I can remember going to CompUSA many years ago to look for RAM upgrades and finding a 16 MB 72-pin SIMM for $800. A couple years ago my dad found the receipts for his old HP LaserJet Series II printer (US$2,200) and an Everex 286 8 MHz IBM AT clone with a whopping 1 MB RAM and a 31 MB hard drive (US$4,987). I don’t recall the years of these purchases, unfortunately. The laser printer died last year when its power supply burned up after almost two decades of reliable service. They really don’t make things like they used to; $2,000 gets you far less quality than it once did.
Wow…$4987….! That’s a lot of money…oh, time for me to go digging into my old photos…