Prices in 1996

[terrybull]

I suspect this is slightly off forum but thought it interesting and hope the mods will tolerate it if it is.
My mother gave me a cutting yesterday dated 29th August 1996. I happened to notice that the rear of this cutting had an advert, presumably from one of the big chains for their current range of PC's. The prices are quite shocking when compared to the specs that were cutting edge at the time. It is easy to forget the performance and price that was the norm not that long ago. The £15 Raspberry Pi would blow these away!

[60 oldjohn]

Prices seem to drop like you say. It has happened right from the beginning of broadcasting. The Gecophone 1002 Crystal set sold for £5.10s in 1922 at that time it may have been a years wages for some, and it only contained one capacitor a Vairomiter and the detector.
John.

[evingar]

Apricot ! That's a name from the past. I remember one of those "Risk Business" type programmes doing profile on the company while they were still making their own hardware. They were a good innovate company, but were swept away by the afore mentioned price drops and a universal move to outsourcing PC manufacture, (and latter PC design) of "standard" components to the Far East.

I member in the mid 90s, coveting machines that would run 'doze 95, but the price was prohibitive, so I stuck with my Model B coupled to "Letter Quality" Dot Matrix printer for my personal correspondence and course work for a few more years.

[Panrock]

I remember my first computer (Win95) outfit cost me about £1500 in 1997. This was quite a thump. I remember thinking then that prices would drop in future, but it seemed a far-off prospect for technology that was so advanced.

That original machine is long gone but I'm writing this on a 1996 computer, purchased a few years ago for £100. By now the hard drive has surface errors but Scandisk is keeping it going. Doubt it's worth anything at all now...

Steve

[Aub]

Didn't realise Acer had been going so long!

[bluepilot]

Originally Posted by Panrock

I remember my first computer (Win95) outfit cost me about £1500 in 1997.

I remember the original IBM PC cost about DM8000. That would be around 4000 Euros or over 3000 Pounds. Luckily copies from the far east were much cheaper.

[terrybull]

My first computer purchase was for my son who needed it for his school work (yes I fell for it) in the early 90's. It was an Escom (remember them?) Pentium 75. I know that with a printer I paid in excess of £1500 which was a real struggle for me at the time. It was terrible and eventually went back and I got a full refund. I don't recall what I replaced it with. I now use several oldish laptops that have been given to me when friends who I fix their machines upgrade.

[bluepilot]

Originally Posted by terrybull

It was an Escom (remember them?) Pentium 75. I know that with a printer I paid in excess of £1500 which was a real struggle for me at the time. It was terrible and eventually went back and I got a full refund.

I remember ESCOM very well. I worked near the original ESCOM shop in Munich. In its day it was a "Geheimtip". They produced good PCs in so far as screwing standard boards together like everyone else did can be considered production. At least with ESCOM you got what you paid for unlike other companies which accidentally on purpose forgot to install half the RAM or forgot to mention that the price didn't include the COAST board. I bought a complete Pentium 133 system from them in 1995, just before they went bust. It cost me DM4000 which must have been a similar price. I remember I did have some problems with it, mainly due to some component or other not being able to handle the amazingly high (for the time) bus frequency. I set the clock to 120MHz instead of 133 MHz and it worked fine for ever afterwards. I still have it somewhere.

[terrybull]

I seem to remember they (Escom) used PC DOS not MS DOS, presumably due to licensing or cost issues. Very similar to MS DOS but a bit quirky. The power supply failed, as did just about every other board. I think they got fed up of me and gave me a refund to go away.

[evingar]

Originally Posted by bluepilot

They produced good PCs in so far as screwing standard boards together like everyone else did can be considered production.

This was the dawn of the "golden age" of DIY computer building. You could save a serious sum back then buying the parts and doing the "bolting together" yourself. I continued with that scheme long after it ceased to make economic sense.

My last "excuse" (the machine that now sits in my workshop) was to tailor the hardware so that I could get a "run from the box" Linux install as a 2nd boot. The machine I'm using now though ( A Dell Inspiron Zino HD) is my first "of the shelf" machine. I can't see me every building my own again, it now makes no sense at all in money terms.

[threeseven]

Our first office network system was 6 user and the server had a 40 MB HD !!! I remember the occasion we had to upgrade the HD to an incredible 80 MB to handle the data we were creating !! The system used Tulip PC's and cost £15,000 in 1988 !! I still have the server and a terminal. What happened to Tulip ?

Does anyone remember Nascom, a board only computer from about '79 - '80 ?

[bluepilot]

Originally Posted by terrybull

I seem to remember they (Escom) used PC DOS not MS DOS, presumably due to licensing or cost issues.

I seem to remember that at one point they used OS/2 due to licensing problems with Windows.

Originally Posted by evingar

This was the dawn of the "golden age" of DIY computer building. You could save a serious sum back then buying the parts and doing the "bolting together" yourself. I continued with that scheme long after it ceased to make economic sense.

The advantage of building your own PC is that you can get exactly what you want. Off-the-shelf PCs usually have too much of something or not enough of something else or they use a weird ALDI-special graphics card or something. By the time you have upgraded all the bits that aren't quite right I don't think you save anything. Then again I use Linux where drivers can be a problem unless you get the right hardware.

[terrybull]

Originally Posted by evingar

This was the dawn of the "golden age" of DIY computer building. You could save a serious sum back then buying the parts and doing the "bolting together" yourself. I continued with that scheme long after it ceased to make economic sense.

My last "excuse" (the machine that now sits in my workshop) was to tailor the hardware so that I could get a "run from the box" Linux install as a 2nd boot. The machine I'm using now though ( A Dell Inspiron Zino HD) is my first "of the shelf" machine. I can't see me every building my own again, it now makes no sense at all in money terms.

I agree to a point that the huge economic advantage of self build has been lost but I still do. About 10 years ago I bought myself a really nice Lan-Li case and quiet high performance power supply. Then you can upgrade only when really necessary and if you do so sensibly ie buy what the early adopters are getting rid off and still have a performance machine at reasonable cost. Having said that I hardly use it and 99% of my computing is with Linux on hand me down laptops. And it's laptops and tablets that everyone seems to want now.

[Oldtestgear]

Does anyone else remember the days when the TARGET price for HDDs was a mere $1 per MB? Makes the cost of todays drives seem completely inconsequential.
Then there was the price per MB of DRAM which was similar the the price per GB today. An amazing few decades of progress has completely chaged the world we live in.

For the better? Well that is a different topic.


Phil

An amazing few decades of progress

1996 to 2012, 16 years, seems like decades.

For the better? Well that is a different topic.

I find that programmes run at about the same speed, they are 'prettier' but still the same speed.

[SiriusHardware]

Originally Posted by threeseven

Does anyone remember Nascom, a board only computer from about '79 - '80 ?

I do, although I never owned one, only saw one. I was a teenager at the time and couldn't afford the £200 or more price tag for the 'Nascom One' - so I bought a £40 'MK14' kit made by 'Science of Cambridge', who later became better known as 'Sinclair'.

I still have the MK14, actually, still in working order although unfortunately missing its original membrane keypad. (The current keypad is one that I built to replace the original, terrible keypad).

[Radio Wrangler]

I can remember the Nascom, and the Altair.

I remember a guy at work showing me the insides of a brand new minicomputer he was configuring for the lab "And all those boards add up to a megabyte of RAM!"

And I remember a bunch of the guys getting together to buy a number of the first Acorn Atoms as kits. The two Acorn people came up from Cambridge and Herman Hauser did the demo.


David

[brenellic2000]

It was for many years the case that a 'NEW IMPROVED' business PC or peripheral was priced at £1,000 - regardless of whether it was any good! A psychological price on the basis that was what the market would accept - and they did, the fools!! It bore no relation to the cost of production.

In the mid 1980s we were still using good old A1 pen plotters which produced proper vector drawings but took almost an hour to plot an architectural drawing. We hankered after a laser printer at £10,000 (running under DOS of course). The boss 'declined' saying they would come down in price... and they did, but not quite to the magical £1,000.

My £1,000 Compaq is still going strong, on 486 power, which is more than can be said of modern junk. I was rich in the 1980s... Oh, happy days :-(

Barry

[DragonForce]

Originally Posted by evingar

I member in the mid 90s, coveting machines that would run 'doze 95, but the price was prohibitive, so I stuck with my Model B coupled to "Letter Quality" Dot Matrix printer for my personal correspondence and course work for a few more years.

And I used a Sinclair ZX Spectrum +3 (running Tasword +3) with an Amstrad DMP2160 dot matrix printer. Later upgraded the printer to a Canon BJ10, and then to an Amiga A500 with a "huge" 2.5 Mb RAM.

Then after a 486DX2/66 Gateway 2000 system.

Escom bought out Commodore back in the day, and went on to make their own version of the A1200 - they were not so reliable if memory serves me correct - both my A1200 machines are Commodore made and still fully working. The A500 went years ago though

10 For a=1 TO 1000000
20 PRINT "Those were the days"
30 NEXT a

[robjkmannering]

20 PRINT "Those were the days"

Modify to:-

20 PRINT "Those were the days ";

Produces much better screen results!
Back to the days of filling the screens in Dixons!

Rob