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Originally Posted by Pinecone
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.
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No, this is preposterous, at least for non-bleeding edge computers. I bought a computer in 1988, and XT clone from Zenith. Computer (with two disk drives!) cost $1,000. That was pretty much what everyone paid. I had to wait a couple of months before I could buy a printer.
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Heck, in 1985 a 5 MB hard drive was $5000. A double sided, double density floppy drive was around $1000.
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No one used hard drives in 1985. I don't know what a floppy drive cost separately,but it was much cheaper in the computer. The first Macintosh computer, from 1984, cost $1995. And was criticized for being too expensive.
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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.
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Yeah, but 486's were bleeding edge in the early 90's. You could have bought an entire computer for the costs of the processor.
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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.
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I agree that prices have fallen - you can buy completely adequate computers for around $500 now. And it did seem like you used to always have to spend $1,000.