Quote:
Originally Posted by wodin
Well, yes "The power of computer chips is increasing at an exponential rate"; but not "prices continue to crash". A high end PC costs the same today as it did in 1985. Around $1000 would get you a state of the art PC AT clone then, and it will get you a high end quad core processer with a TByte drive and 8 GB of RAM today.
It's just that a high end PC is very much higher end than it was in 1985. Actually the prices are decreasing, but only in terms of the dollar not being worth as much today as it was then.
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I disagree. In the 1980s through the mid to late 90s, the price of a computer system was about $5000. Computer, monitor, printer. And that was not a leading edge computer, but a mainstream, what you wanted to buy.
Heck, in 1985 a 5 MB hard drive was $5000. A double sided, double density floppy drive was around $1000.
In the early 90s, I upgraded a 386 computer to a 486. The motherboard and processor (with trade in credit) was $1500. Later, a 486/66 CPU for that machine was about $1000.
Now days, a system is well under $1000.
Yes, to computer you buy today is a lot more powerful than the computer of before, but the prices have REALLY fallen.