What was the most expensive computer you or your family ever purchased?

[justlnluck]

I remember back in 1996, my family purchased the following from Micron Electronics (remember when they sold computers?):

Pentium 166mhz system
with 32mb EDO RAM,
Video card with 4mb VRAM,
SoundBlaster32 with 4mb ram,
33.6k modem
SCSI interface card
SCSI 2GB 7200rpm Hard drive
SCSI Plextor 6x CDROM drive
Floppy Drive
17" CRT Monitor
Mouse, Keyboard
Windows 95, Office 95, along with literally a binder with pages of other Microsoft CD programs

For a grand total of roughly.....$5000

And we were upgrading from a Gateway 2000 system (remember when Gateway was called Gateway 2000?) that was purchased in 1994 for over $2000 and included:

486 DX system
8mb ram
Video card with 2mb ram
SoundBlaster16
200Mb Hard Drive
2x CDROM drive
Floppy Drive
15" CRT Monitor
Mouse, Keyboard
Windows 3.11 for Workgroups

As a side note, anyone fondly remember all those cartoon cow graphics that Gateway 2000 would put on their Windows backgrounds? They would have Besse in all these crazy locations like an astronaut in outer space....and this was on Windows 3.11 of course! lol

 

[secretanchitman]

Packard Bell
Pentium 60Mhz
integrated ati (i think) 4MB video card
sound blaster 16
14.4k modem
bought a reveal 4x (quad-speed! hahahaha) cd-rom that came with tons of games
floppy
bought a 15" NEC Multisync 3v monitor
mouse, keyboard

i remember it was more than 3000 bucks...damn.

 

[Minerva]

Silicon Graphics R2k based workstation, about $30k. Used twice and abandoned.

 

[pretendR]

PowerBook G4 17" 1.5 GHz, 512 MB, 70 GB 5400 rpm drive.
It was about $3000

 

[regnez]

A really old 486, I don't remember the exact specs, but it was bad. Win95, 33mhz, 4mb ram, 200mb hdd, external modem (28k, later upgrade to 56k), came with MS Office and everything, I think.

$1600 ish.

EDIT: Had to purchase the monitor separately. That was another $300, for a 14" CRT POS. The entire set matched, though. It was all the same hideous beige.

 

[Oxaqata]

Pentium 4 3Ghz
512mb RAM
128mb 5200FX
160gb Maxtor 7200rpm HDD
17" LG LCD
Some epson combo Printer

Cost a few grand in 2004

This system my grandma bought in 1997 might have been more expensive. She gave it away to us in late 2000.

Pentium 1 MMX @ 200mhz
32mb EDO RAM
2mb S3 Video card
2gb Mustang HDD
15" Samatron CRT
HP Printer

 

[Cogman]

Something like a $1500 Gateway Pentium 2 266 with a whole 2 gig hard drive and 32MB of ram (Dang that thing was blazing fast). Windows 95 was the Default OS. I also remember learning about Direct X for the first time with it (wow, this makes me feel old.)

 

[Amaroque]

The most I spent personally was about $3,000. It was a loaded P133, and I spent an additional $600 to add another 16MB of EDO (double the amount) of RAM. lol

My parents however spent about $8,000 on a 386SX machine, with a laser printer and the works though. Time flys though, my son will be typing here in only a few years.

 

[Roguestar]

Originally posted by: Minerva
Silicon Graphics R2k based workstation, about $30k. Used twice and abandoned.

Ouch .


Ours was a ~£2000 P133 Fujitsu back in the day. 16Mb RAM, 1.2Gb HD.

 

[Gigantopithecus]

Probably a Dell 486 66mhz 8mb ram ~300mb hdd + 15" Mitsubishi DiamondScan monitor. I think it was around $3,000. We later spent another $300 on another 8mb memory module. I remember a friend of mine and I staying up practically two days straight playing Doom 2 on it when it first came out. It came on 5 floppies & was sweeeeet. 7th Guest was badass, too.

His parents later dropped about 5 Gs on a Pentium when they first came out & it crashed due to the infamous bug, hehe.

 

[Melectricus]

Originally posted by: Minerva
Silicon Graphics R2k based workstation, about $30k. Used twice and abandoned.

Crap, my old, old, old company was going to buy a dozen but got only two. I think two years later they were still trying to figure a way to make them pay for themselves.

 

[SoundTheSurrender]

3,000 dollar Packard Bell. 100 Mhz, 16 megs of ram.

 

[SparkyJJO]

The one in my sig now. My parents never have bought top of the line expensive PCs, so it was up to me to build the expensive one Heck their PC is still running a gforce 3!

 

[PorscheMaD911]

The first Pentium II IBM Aptiva for a cool $5000.

 

[Looney]

Hitachi 133MX Laptop. $5k

 

[AznVenom]

An IBM 386-SX 16mhz for $8000 back in 1988 that ran on 640k ram. Don't ask me about video card or what not because I was still young then. I think it had a 160mb hard drive and I was running DOS 4.0 and Windows 2.0 at the time.

P.S. 3.5" Floppy Disk Drives just came out then ROFLz


Veno(V)

 

[AMDIntel]

Laptop 1997 Dell Latitude XPI CD 166 MMX $4999.

Supposedly, it was the first laptop model to feature Active Matrix Display (previous laptops were dual-scan).

Still can't believe that I spent 5 grand for a computer.

 

[Aikouka]

My current PC cost me about $4000... well, until I removed the two expensive hard drives and replaced them ... now it's about $3500, but still my most expensive (prior was about $2250).

 

[Oyeve]

My Compaq Deskpro 386/25. Back in the late 80s, 386 proc @25mhz, 300meg ESDI HD, 4 meg ram, 256k Orchid Video card, floppy, 15" NEC 3D monitor. Total cost: $12,000. HD alone was nearly $3000. Still have it. Refuse to toss it being it cost so damn much!

Oh, and I bought MS Dos 2.x, forget the cost of that. No mice back then. No windows for that matter. Windows 1.0 was out but didnt have it.

 

[kypron7]

386 @ 16 mhz (if you left the "turbo button" off it was only 8 mhz
640k ram
30 mb hardrive
something like a 12" crt

approx 2500 dollars back in 1992.