Computers -- Then And Now

What a difference 22 years make! I recently spent some time perusing a stack of PC World magazines from '95/96. And, to be frank, where we are now vs where we were then is startling. The Dec 95 issue speaks volumes. As with all the back covers of that time, Dell owned it on this issue. The blurb in big letters: "THE MOST POWERFUL WINDOWS 95 SYSTEM $2699 CAN BUY." (The fact that it was $2499 in the Jan 96 ad was quite telling.) Here's what one got for $2699: DELL DIMENSION XPS P133C 133 MHz PENTIUM PROCESSOR Mini Tower Model 16MB EDO Memory (128MB Max RAM) 256 Pipeline Burst Cache 1GB Hard Drive [10ms"] (2GB Max) 15LS Monitor (15" CRT, NI) 64-bit PCI 2MB DRAM Video (128-bit 4MB VRAM Max) 4X Multi-Session EIDE CD-ROM Drive AWE32 Wave Table Sound Card Take $2700 today and see what can be built. Inside is a review of the Top 20 Notebooks. Leading the pack is a Toshiba Portg 610CT. It was powered by a Pentium 90, with 8 megs of RAM and a 720 MB HD. Cost: $4649. In the review of the Top 20 Power Desktops, top honors go to a Micron P133 Millenia, with a Pentium 133, 16 megs of RAM and a 1624 MB HD. The price for this screamer: $3599. Buy two! They're cheap. The #1 slot in the Top 20 Budget Desktops is owned by a Dell Dimension P75t, with a Pentium 75 CPU, 8 megs of RAM and a 540 MB HD. No home should be without one at a paltry $1679. On page 33, Pinnacle Micro was hawking a 2X Recordable CD System for "only" $995, a steal in view of the fact that the HP 4020i was $1249, the Sony CSP 92115 was $1695, and the JVC Personal Archiver went for a breathtaking $1795. The ads in back are a hoot in their own right. 9.1 gig SCSI HDs were running over $2000. 64 megs of 72-pin EDO RAM was listed at $2799 (SDRAM was still in the future). Scanners were a minimum of $400. Modems (28.8K - no 56K yet) went for up to $400. A Soundblaster card went for $100 and up. A Logitech TrackMan Marble (a trackball mouse) was a C-note. A Sony 17" Multiscan monitor sold for an impressive $879. A Compaq LTE 5000 laptop with a P-120 and a 1.26GB HD was a whistle-provoking $6329, but an IBM Thinkpad 760 with a P-90 and a 1.2GB HD topped that at $7449. Ah, the good old days!