Just thought this might be good for a laugh, especially for the young ones on the board. When I was in college, I remember when KryoTech came out with some Phase-change cooled PCs that you could buy. These were enabling (at the time) insane 100MHz+ overclocks!
Wired did an article when the machine I am about to mention first came out: http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/1998/06/12695
Anyway, at the time, I priced out what would be, to me at the time, an absolute top tier machine, and made a text file at the time, labeling it "Dream Machine." Looking back at components included and prices, it's rather funny, IMO. This is from July 23, 1998, as far as pricing and such is concerned:
AMD K6-2 450MHz Processor $1699.00
KryoTech -40C Cooling system
Motherboard
300W Power Supply
Mid-Tower Case
Seagate EIDE 9.5GB HD $ 319.95
Internal Iomega Zip Drive $ 99.00
Kingston 128MB PC-100 SDRAM $ 384.95
Floppy Drive $ 24.00
Creative Labs 2x DVD-ROM $ 199.99
20 inch Samsung Monitor $ 570.95
112k Internal Modem $ 48.95
Creative Labs Soundblaster PCI-64 $ 99.99
Windows 98 $ 88.99
--------------------------------------------------------
SUB TOTAL: $3535.77
NYS Sales Tax: $ 247.50
--------------------------------------------------------
TOTAL: $3783.27
A few funny things stand out to me. One, that a 9.5GB drive was a big drive. Two, that I felt the need to include a floppy drive and a modem...and of course a Zip drive...they were the future replacement for the floppy, remember? Three, that a 20" CRT monitor was $570 in 1998.
And while $3,783 for a PC certainly isn't cheap, just think...accounting for inflation, it'd cost $5,260 today!
Wired did an article when the machine I am about to mention first came out: http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/1998/06/12695
Anyway, at the time, I priced out what would be, to me at the time, an absolute top tier machine, and made a text file at the time, labeling it "Dream Machine." Looking back at components included and prices, it's rather funny, IMO. This is from July 23, 1998, as far as pricing and such is concerned:
AMD K6-2 450MHz Processor $1699.00
KryoTech -40C Cooling system
Motherboard
300W Power Supply
Mid-Tower Case
Seagate EIDE 9.5GB HD $ 319.95
Internal Iomega Zip Drive $ 99.00
Kingston 128MB PC-100 SDRAM $ 384.95
Floppy Drive $ 24.00
Creative Labs 2x DVD-ROM $ 199.99
20 inch Samsung Monitor $ 570.95
112k Internal Modem $ 48.95
Creative Labs Soundblaster PCI-64 $ 99.99
Windows 98 $ 88.99
--------------------------------------------------------
SUB TOTAL: $3535.77
NYS Sales Tax: $ 247.50
--------------------------------------------------------
TOTAL: $3783.27
A few funny things stand out to me. One, that a 9.5GB drive was a big drive. Two, that I felt the need to include a floppy drive and a modem...and of course a Zip drive...they were the future replacement for the floppy, remember? Three, that a 20" CRT monitor was $570 in 1998.
And while $3,783 for a PC certainly isn't cheap, just think...accounting for inflation, it'd cost $5,260 today!
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And RAM was that much cheaper in '98 than it was 15 years before that. I don't know prices before about 1991, but I know that upgrading our 386 from 2 to 4MB cost over $200. At that price, we're talking $1.6 Million for 16GB of RAM in 1992.
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