Quote:
Originally Posted by wodin
Not so.
Granted, and IBM PC-XT (8086 processor) with a 5 MB HDD came in at around four grand, but a LeadingEdge, Acer, Compaq, Packard Bell, Gateway, and Micron as well as several other "clone" manufacturers were about $1,000. When IBM came out with the IBM AT (80286 with 20 MB Drive) they too were around $4,000, and the clones were about $1,200. This trend continued through the entire 80*86 line of processors, and into the era of the Pentiums, eventually driving IBM out of the PC market entirely.
I put together my first white box in 1985. It was an XT clone with a 20 MB drive, a double sided double density 5.25" floppy drive, 1 MB of RAM (in the words of Mr. Gates "More than anyone would ever need!"), and a 12" 16 color CGA monitor all in a flip top box and the total bill was right at $1,000. A Star NX-10 dot matrix printer was another $200.
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The price of that hardware today would be in the low single digits and could (save for the monitor obviously) be put on something that would fit comfortably in your pocket. In fact, the Raspberry Pi single chip computer will retail for about $25, and feature 256 times the ram and a 700mhz processor.
Which is all to say that the price of computer hardware has crashed precipitously. Which is also why new features get added to hardware constantly - it becomes cheap and easy to do it as hardware prices drop.