Best Buy ad from 1996

[Wyndru]

EDO memory, I just threw a bunch of those out a couple of weeks ago. Lifetime warranty too!

 

[tboo]

DVDs weren't out yet. All the movies appear to be VHS. Ah, the good old days.

 

[Texashiker]

EDO memory, most people these days dont know what that is.

Hexen, but no quake? I guess the paper was before the release of quake?

16 megs of memory for $130,,,,. I remember prices like that.

1996, that was the year my daughter was born.

 

[amdhunter]

Damn. Those SONY MDRV100's really lasted a long time. I have some by my desk today.

 

[darkxshade]

Oh that brings back memories.

 

[ComputerWizKid]

Lol 4MB of ram for $30 now it $30 for 4GB of ram

 

[rasczak]

I was just three years out of high school. Damnit!

 

[Ancalagon44]

You gotta love progress. We can get all of our gadgets for much cheaper, and they work much better. Heck my smartphone is more powerful than any of those PCs.

Note another thing that died a horrible death as soon as MP3s became mainstream - the CD changer/CD carousel.

This actually brought me back to old memories working (well playing really) on Win3.1. Hard drives were so much noisier back then!

 

[FeuerFrei]

They were still selling pagers.

I bought/played Descent II <3

9 months prior to that circular I bought an 100Mhz Pentium system for $2048

 

[waggy]

wow.

one thing i noticed. vacuums, refrigerators, stoves, etc all seem to be priced the same. cheap ones are the same price and expensive ones are still expensive.

lol at the computer stuff. sad but i remember building a 133mhz when they first came out. man it was fast! expensive..but fast. I also spent like $300 on a 15 inch monitor. the fucking thing was huge.

prices were insane for computers back then.

 

[Saint Nick]

Dude...Hexen! 16MB memory upgrade...$130

 

[Zeze]

Jesus a $1800 PC (which is probably like $2200~ in today's dollar).

Who spends that much on PCs nowadays.

 

[Zeze]

You gotta love progress. We can get all of our gadgets for much cheaper, and they work much better. Heck my smartphone is more powerful than any of those PCs.

Your smartphone is more powerful than All of those 4 PCs and 3 laptops COMBINED.

 

[purbeast0]

aaliyah

 

[Zeze]

aaliyah

Yea noticed that too. Other funny things:

*Macarena!
*Those old Norton AV boxes with random white dudes on it
*Lol portable CD player with antiskip!

 

[Saint Nick]

Just noticed that ad came out a day after my 10th birthday. Lol...Wow, 311 is on there with their Mercury album...I thought they were still a bar band at that point...

 

[fatpat268]

Yea noticed that too. Other funny things:

*Macarena!
*Those old Norton AV boxes with random white dudes on it
*Lol portable CD player with antiskip!

Those portable CD players really didn't die out until at least 2002-2003. Yea, the ipod was out by then and mp3 players were getting popular, but at the time CD players playing mp3s burned on them were all the rage.

 

[JulesMaximus]

How to sell a computer in 1996 101: Mark it up $200 and package it with a shitty $89 printer and they will come. Oh and offer no interest financing on said computer.

I like the motorola flip phone. The part that flips out is just a useless piece of plastic that does nothing.

 

[Zeze]

Those portable CD players really didn't die out until at least 2002-2003. Yea, the ipod was out by then and mp3 players were getting popular, but at the time CD players playing mp3s burned on them were all the rage.

I was all about my 'superior' MiniDisc player.

I remember when first flash-ram based players came out, far before ipod. OMG my Rio player has 16 RAMs!!!! I CAN SQUEEZE IN SIX 96kbps MP3 SONGS!! (Even back then 128 was standard)

 

[TakeNoPrisoners]

The dark ages of technology. D: Good thing I didn't really get into computers until like 1999. Things wern't that much more advanced though.

Amazing how PC's are so much cheaper but exponentially faster.


I bet the $400 laptop that can do all you need was an unheard of concept at that time.

 

[drebo]

Those portable CD players really didn't die out until at least 2002-2003. Yea, the ipod was out by then and mp3 players were getting popular, but at the time CD players playing mp3s burned on them were all the rage.

Yep...I got my first MP3 player in like 2000. It was an RCA and it took compactflash cards. I had two 32mb CF cards. It played MP3 and RealAudio.

Then I got an MP3 CD Player and my life changed

 

[Wyndru]

I like the motorola flip phone. The part that flips out is just a useless piece of plastic that does nothing.

Oh yeah, I had one of those. The phone was identical to a buddies of mine, except mine had that cool flap lol. It protected the keypad like a champ.

 

[Cogman]

Imagine how we will look at computers in 2020.

"WTF, you guys would spend $50 on 8gb of ram! I have 8gb of internal cache on my smartphone's CPU, lol"

 

[Zeze]

I never understood why those ancient StarTac flip phones remained popular for SO LONG even after Nokia came out with far better interface with games (rather than 9-digit display).

 

[ThatsABigOne]

my intro to pc's was my friend's packard bell 166, just like the 1 in the ad. i very much learned what a pc should not be like due to that thing.

1 of the garbage links at the bottom took me to this:

You fail. That is no dumblefuck. That is pure man genius Gandalf.