Yikes, just ran across PC prices from 9/98

[Night201]

Originally posted by: Kenazo
my first computer was a 486sx25 w/ 4 megs of ram, some trident video card and a 270 meg hdd. But, i was the only one I knew who had a 2x cd-rom and an sb16. My sb16 is still being used in an old celeron box I use for my ftp server

Back in 94 or 95 I think, my 3x NEC cd-rom bundled with my SB16 Sound card cost me $750!

 

[macwinlin]

In the engineering and science library at UCLA, there are a bunch of PC Magazine issues binded together going back to at least to the mid 1990s. I browsed through the 1996 issues to see what I could have gotten during my freshman year at UCLA. Yes, for $3000 you can get a Dell Dimension w/a Pentium 133 or 166 (maybe even 200 MMX), 3 or 4 GB hard drive, some 4 MB or even and 8 MB video card and a 15" monitor. Nowadays, I'm waiting for the _laptops_ to reach $500 (of course with the help of rebates and coupons).

 

[Bitek]

Cshow...I remem having to dial into BBS's to get pics, and there were no thumbs so you just had to look for one that had a good sounding file name then hope for the best, as downloading a 200k gif with a 2400 baud modem (15-20 min) was a major commitment! 😀 Girl could be ugly as hell, but as long as she didn't have a hairy lip, that file never got deleted! (hey I was ~13 at the time!) Zmodem transfer was badass bc it would resume a download if interrupted!

1st comp was a 10mhz Acer, 20mg hdd. the 486DX/33mhz my dad paid $4k for in ~'91 was a freaking rocket.


Actually, funny story about that BBS. It was a huge adult BBS that you had to pay for, but they gave free lifetime membership to women, so my younger bro and I tricked my Mom into saying all these random words and recorded them using the microphone, then remixed it in win3.1 sound recorder into a message. So all we had to do is call their phone number and leave a message (in a woman's voice) on their machine giving the user name and birthdate. Held phone up to speaker, played recording, and *viola!* free lifetime premium access!!! 😀😀😀 😎

Only bad thing was we had these guys inviting you to a private chat; told them we just munched carpet, and were too busy D\L pix of hot lesbo action, and couldn't waste the bandwidth. Damn kids today! Internet as made scoring pr0n way too easy!!


Sierra games rocked!!!

 

[Jmman]

Hey, my $3000 486/dx 66 was badass......they thing could smoke my current box.....NOT!! I remember looking at 240Meg hard drives and not being able to imagine how I could ever fill that baby up.....🙂

 

[bleeb]

sh*t, i remember when 4 MB of ram was like 200 bucks!

 

[bolido2000]

Originally posted by: Chaotic42
That's funny, I was looking through a Computer Shopper from 1995 at work yesterday. I have a "PC Home and Family Computing" (or something like that) from 1987 somewhere. It has a "blazing fast" 286 in it with a huge 100MB drive and 1MB of RAM. It's like $11,000.

I bought a 486DX2 with 32meg of Ram for $2500 in 1995

 

[BeauJangles]

Originally posted by: Cenalian
Most of you will be saying the exact same things 5 years from now about the stuff thats out today

😛

It definitely won't be as dramatic. Computer prices are (relatively) much lower now.

 

[ptyes]

My first comp was a Pentium 200, though my family had a Pentium 66 when it came out. That thing cost my Dad about $3,000 at the time. Then 2 1/4 years ago my Mom replaces the computer and spend $3,200 for a very sweet rig. It's a Dell and it was ordered on the first day they started selling Pentium 4s. It runs on a 1.4Ghz processor. It also came with 4.1 Dolby Digital speakers, which are very nice. I recently dumped $500 on a new rig. It performs the same (ran benchmarks PCMark and 3DMark, both got equivilent results, though I swaped my Radeon 8500 between them).

*My Mom bought the PC through her biz. for tax reasons.

We also timed that PC purchase just at the end of the dot.com bubble, if we had waited like six months or so, we could've gotten it for a lot less, but I was playing on a Pentium 200 FOR GOD SAKES!

 

[amnesiac]

Originally posted by: BlinderBomber

Originally posted by: Cenalian
Most of you will be saying the exact same things 5 years from now about the stuff thats out today

😛

It definitely won't be as dramatic. Computer prices are (relatively) much lower now.

Exactly. You can buy an uber-1337 computer for about $1200 now including monitor.

Some of my past expenditures:

P-133 system loaded to the gills, $3000
1GB Micropolis SCSI HD, $1000
21" Iiyama Vision Master Pro, $1000

:Q

 

[Siddhartha]

Originally posted by: RossMAN
I'm doing some spring cleaning at work and had a screen print from C|Net.com dated 9/12/98, I was probably helping a co-worker price some systems.

Here's an example of the prices:
$2,829 Dell Dimension XPS R450 P2/450 64MB RAM, 14GB HD, 17" CRT, 56k, 4.8x DVD, Zip, etc.

$3,081 Gateway G6-450 P2/450 64MB RAM, 14GB HD, 19" CRT, 56k, 2x DVD, CD-RW, etc.

$2,599 Micron Millennia 450 P2/450 64MB RAM, 8GB HD, 17" CRT, 56k, 2x DVD, etc.

5 years later you can buy a Dell Dimension 4550 P4/2.4GHz for $550 after rebate without monitor, dayum!

Remember when you had 64MB, 14GB, and 4x DVD??? You were king of the hill!

😀

The good old days!

 

[Koing]

I remember when I had P133, 16mb ram, 2mb graphic card built on mobo, and 1Gb of HD and I WAS KING OF THE HILL!....lol

 

[Jmman]

Actually, the first computer I wanted to get was an IBM PC junior with that smokin' fast 4.77 MHZ processor...🙂

 

[Spyro]

Originally posted by: Hafen
Sierra games rocked!!!

😎

 

[ShotgunSteven]

Originally posted by: Jmman
I remember looking at 240Meg hard drives and not being able to imagine how I could ever fill that baby up.....🙂

I paid extra to get the BIG 107 MB harddrive on my Packard Bell 386-SX. I got tired of Windows and wound up removing it and just used DOS for everything. 😛

 

[Spyro]

Originally posted by: ShotgunSteve

Originally posted by: Jmman
I remember looking at 240Meg hard drives and not being able to imagine how I could ever fill that baby up.....🙂

I paid extra to get the BIG 107 MB harddrive on my Packard Bell 386-SX. I got tired of Windows and wound up removing it and just used DOS for everything. 😛

I miss my 10mb hard drive 🙁

 

[ShotgunSteven]

Originally posted by: wizardLRU

Originally posted by: ShotgunSteve

Originally posted by: Jmman
I remember looking at 240Meg hard drives and not being able to imagine how I could ever fill that baby up.....🙂

I paid extra to get the BIG 107 MB harddrive on my Packard Bell 386-SX. I got tired of Windows and wound up removing it and just used DOS for everything. 😛

I miss my 10mb hard drive 🙁

I seem to recall seeing a one megabyte harddrive for an Apple IIGS back when I had one of those. Imagine, a whole megabyte! :Q The price was rather obscene if I recall correctly, somewhere along the lines of $400.00 to $999.00.

 

[Nohr]

Hehe, I happen to a December '95/January '96 catalog from PCs Compleat.

For the budget minded:
AST: Cyrix P/75, 8MB, 420MB, PCI 1MB video, no monitor, $1329
Digital: 486DX2 66, 4MB, 420MB, 1MB S3 video, no monitor, $1299
NEC: Pentium 75, 8MB, 1.08GB, 4X CD, 28.8 modem, PCI 1MB video, no monitor, $1799

The beasts:
IBM: Pentium 133, 16MB, 1GB, 4X CD, 28.8 modem, PCI 1MB video, no monitor, $2899
AST: Pentium 133, 16MB, 1.6GB, 4X CD, PCI 1MB video, no monitor, $3229
Packard Bell: Pentium 133, 16MB, 2.1GB, 4X CD, 28.8 modem, PCI 1MB video, no monitor, $2699
NEC: Pentium 133, 16MB, 1.6GB, 4X CD, 28.8 modem, PCI 1MB video, no monitor, $2999

Monitors:
Sony 14" 1024x768 .25mm monitor $316
NEC 15" 1024x768 .28mm monitor $450
Magnavox 17" 1280x1024 .28mm monitor $750

Kingston 70ns SIMMs:
4MB $200
8MB $390
32MB $1429

Maxtor Hard drives:
540MB $200
850MB $240
1GB $280
1.2GB $320
1.6GB $350

CD-ROM:
4X $200
6X $270

 

[sharkeeper]

A picture is worth one thousand words! :Q

Cheers!

 

[ShotgunSteven]

Originally posted by: sharkeeper
A picture is worth one thousand words! :Q

Cheers!

You beat me to it, I have seen that one around the 'Net and was going to track it down. 😛

 

[Mr.IncrediblyBored]

Originally posted by: amnesiac 2.0

Originally posted by: BlinderBomber

Originally posted by: Cenalian
Most of you will be saying the exact same things 5 years from now about the stuff thats out today

😛

It definitely won't be as dramatic. Computer prices are (relatively) much lower now.

Exactly. You can buy an uber-1337 computer for about $1200 now including monitor.

Some of my past expenditures:

P-133 system loaded to the gills, $3000
1GB Micropolis SCSI HD, $1000
21" Iiyama Vision Master Pro, $1000

:Q

I love when people bring out PC catalogues from the 90's. Everybody is always flabbergasted at the prices they paid for the relative performance. Yes, we paid top dollar for top of the line products back then. What does a top of the line system cost now? Certainly not that much lower.

A "system loaded to the gills" nowadays still costs about $3000. You get more for your money, but hey that's the beauty of progress.

 

[KGB1]

$2,829 Dell Dimension XPS R450 P2/450 64MB RAM, 14GB HD, 17" CRT, 56k, 4.8x DVD, Zip, etc.

That's bad... I remember DELL selling mainstream computers with a P3 & i820 for over $3500 with barely 20Gb HDD, 5 x DVD, 64MB RDRAM.

Course memory price was super high back then, and intel barely had any competition.

My first PC was a Pentium 166MMX with a SiS chipset with 4 MB integrated video.. I'd play Delta Force on it ALL the time 🙂