Every so often, I like to play the game where I think of how much technology things cost when I first got them. For much of my life, I was a dedicated early adopter of all sorts of gadgets. Well, as the gadgets have become more complicated and more expensive, I've become much more comfortable waiting a little bit before picking up the latest and greatest. It may not be the latest anymore when I get it, but the significant price drop is always appreciated. Here are some of the devices I've picked up over the years:
- the original IBM PC - this machine came with a whopping 16kb of RAM, a single sided floppy drive with a 160kb storage capacity, and a green monochrome monitor. The CPU ran at a blistering 4.77 MHz speed. The total cost to me, monitor included, was about $2700 in 1981.
- Yamaha CD R/W drive - this was a tool necessary for my game company to burn master disks for reproduction. The drive had a 4x read speed and a blazing 2x write speed, and I got the drive for the bargain basement price of $3,000 in 1995. By the way, each recordable disk was a gold master, and they ran $10 apiece.
- Hewlett Packard fax machine - in 1988, the communications consulting partnership I had needed to receive and send documents by fax. We considered leasing a machine, but we decided to make a purchase for the long-term instead, picking up the machine for a cool $2800.
- 10 Mb hard drive - when it came time to upgrade my IBM PC, I found a great deal on a hard drive. 10 Mb of storage space (I'd never fill that up!), and only about 5 pounds. I got it cheap at $600. (Yes, that was 10 Megabytes of storage space.)
- NEC 3D Multisync monitor - Sometime in the early '90s (though I can't recall the exact date), I was so thrilled to get this $700 video monitor. It gave me an incredible 1024 x 768 interlaced resolution on a whopping 14" CRT. (Today I just ordered a 24" LCD monitor capable of a full 1920 x 1200 resolution for $269.)
- Online BBS service - before the ubiquitous Internet and World Wide Web, I paid an hourly rate of $12.95 for my blazing 1200 baud connection. Ah, the good old days of getting a $400 montly bill to get an online text service.
There's a whole lot more, and I'm afraid to do a full inventory--I don't need to think about how much money I've spent to stay in the hi-tech club, especially now with my 401k taking a nosedive. But the more important point is the fact that the cost of technology has dropped so dramatically over the years, and it continues to do so. Free market innovation and competition takes the lion's share of the credit in that regard. All I can say is, keep the gadgets coming!
- Hap Aziz