The Cost of a Computer the Year You Were Born

[Svnla]

from 1971 to 2015, so ole geezers, you are out of luck.


http://247wallst.com/special-report/2016/04/15/how-much-a-computer-cost-the-year-you-were-born/


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[mnewsham]

Year before: $2,375
Year after: $7,599

My year? $700

 

[Markbnj]

1960, eleventy gazillion dollars.

 

[sandorski]

DDP-116 General Purpose Computer

3C DDP-116 introduced

• Computers

Designed by engineer Gardner Hendrie for Computer Control Corporation (CCC), the DDP-116 is announced at the 1965 Spring Joint Computer Conference. It was the world's first commercial 16-bit minicomputer and 172 systems were sold. The basic computer cost $28,500.



That's approx $216,000 in todays US $.

 

[Raduque]

1982
>Notable computer: Commodore 64
>Price tag: $595
>Inflation adjusted price: $1,462

 

[brianmanahan]

my parents bought be my first PC in '94 for 2500$

when i think about how much they were making and how much that would cost now, it makes me sick

it makes me feel absolutely freaking horrible

 

[master_shake_]

1982
>Notable computer: Commodore 64
>Price tag: $595
>Inflation adjusted price: $1,462

same.

miss my old commodore...

emulators just aren't the same.

 

[Pardus]

Scanned in an old copy of pcmag from 1999.

 

[DrPizza]

Unfortunately, computers got too cheap. There seems to have been a sweet spot, maybe 12 years ago, where the people who had computers at home were those who, in general, were better educated. Now, every idiot can afford one, every idiot can get online, and now, cyberspace is filled with idiots.

 

[Sonikku]

1982
>Notable computer: Commodore 64
>Price tag: $595
>Inflation adjusted price: $1,462

That's not so bad. :thumbsup:

 

[AnitaPeterson]

Too friggin' Apple-centric. Also, too North American.

For instance, 1982 was the year the ZX Spectrum (see my avatar) came out... it was widely cloned behind the Iron Curtain, making it the most widely-spread microcomputer in that part of the world until the 1990s...

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

About half a million and you needed a spare 1800 square feet.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

Doesn't go back far enough. I guess Jesus was born in 1971.

 

[I Saw OJ]

1983
Notable computer: Apple Lisa
Price tag: $9,995
Inflation adjusted price: $23,794

 

[Sonikku]

Damn, 23 grand for a COMPUTER?! Hunk a junk didn't even run Crisis.

 

[sdifox]

Doesn't go back far enough.

 

[sdifox]

Unfortunately, computers got too cheap. There seems to have been a sweet spot, maybe 12 years ago, where the people who had computers at home were those who, in general, were better educated. Now, every idiot can afford one, every idiot can get online, and now, cyberspace is filled with idiots.

Fortunately most of them are on fb, tweeter, snap chat etc.

 

[Brian Stirling]

In the year I was born, 1956, IBM released the IBM 350 with fifty 24" platters and a total storage of 3.75MB and a cost of about $160K or $1.3M in todays dolars -- it would take about 14 of these units to store a single RAW image from my Nikon D800E.


Brian

 

[sdifox]

In the year I was born, 1956, IBM released the IBM 350 with fifty 24" platters and a total storage of 3.75MB and a cost of about $160K or $1.3M in todays dolars -- it would take about 14 of these units to store a single RAW image from my Nikon D800E.


Brian

The camera would be the size of Titanic.

 

[Chiropteran]

Price tag: $9,875
>Inflation adjusted price: $35,912

 

[Brian Stirling]

When all was said and done the first PC, the original IBM PC, probably cost me north of $4500 in 1982 dollars so probably closer to $12K in today's dollars.

This wasn't my first computer, the Commodore Vic 20 was my first, but it was the first PC and came with two 360KB floppy drives and 48KB of RAM. This was purchased with the employee discount as I worked at IBM back then and I ordered it within 3 weeks of starting at IBM on March 1, 1982. It took nearly a year for the PC I ordered to arrive. I ordered it with the monochrome display and then added the color monitor and along with a dot matrix printer the total came to about $4500 back then -- if I'd ordered without the employee discount I'd likely have received it a lot sooner but paid another $500 for it.


Brian

 

[Red Squirrel]

1986
>Notable computer: Compaq Portable II
>Price tag: $3,499
>Inflation adjusted price: $7,570

The Compaq Portable II, though markedly lighter than its predecessors, is hardly portable by today’s standards. Despite the machine’s relatively small 9 inch monitor, it weighed 26 pounds and did not pack as neatly as modern laptops.

Our first family computer was a Pentium 3 from a local company in the year 2000 or so. It cost around 3 grand if I recall. I did play on a 486DX2 computer years before that, it was my sister's university computer, it was at our house for a bit before she moved away. I mostly played in MS paint and various DOS games like wing commander. Fun times. /computers were so scary and obscure then, but it also added a more mysterious effect. Now I tend to take them for granted and just get pissed off if they don't work properly.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Just realized for year 2000 they show a gateway computer with a pentium 4, did not realize those were out yet by then. Also that Altec Lansing sub woofer is the exact same one I have at home right now. The speakers are different though. Might be a slightly different model where they kept the same subwoofer design.

 

[Imp]

Story is that whatever the price was, we paid more because ma and pa decided to let some piece of shit relative buy it for us -- ended up scamming us.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

At the time of its release, the Power Mac G5 was the most powerful Macintosh computer. It was the first personal computer to utilize 64-bit processing, allowing users to run tasks twice as fast as was possible with 32-bit architecture, the standard at the time.