Top spec pc

[jon1968]

Was telling a mate about a 20 year old Tandy advert that did the rounds on email a couple of years ago proclaiming a 'super fast 20mhz pc' for $8500 (monitor not included!!), I'd hazard a guess that's about $30K in todays money? :-S

Question is if you wanted the absolute best of the best of all components how much could you theoretically spend on an individual tower? Is it even possible to spend that much today?

[jon1968]

Ooops, here�s the old ad, quite funny...

Tandy ad

[Ethel]

You can buy a laptop for $350,000

http://www.gizmag.com/go/4085/

And Voodoo were selling a $24,000 tower, but I can't find a link

[ChuckFickens]

Think you would struggle to spend that much now...

though you can pay silly amounts for a top spec machine still

http://i43.tinypic.com/66jif8.jpg

that's from http://www.alienware.com/

their laptops can be even more expensive.

[jon1968]

Bl00dy hell, Ethel, that�s just daft!!?
I thought there were only 5 key components to consider? Motherboard, processor, graphics, RAM & sound - none of which would cost more than a grand each these days?
What do those alienware ones do Chuck, make the tea as well?? :-)

[ChuckFickens]

Most of the cost of the one Ethel posted is made up of the diamond and platinum case.

To be fair the one I posted the pic of the checkout screen for I did add every option they have, which includes a lot of things like game controllers and an expensive router so not strictly just a tower.

[chas2008]

when i was clearing out my dads house i found a Sun paper with a currys add for a , wait for it !!! 8meg of ram 2 gig HD system for �899.00..
bargain
people dont believe me when i say it used to cost �10 a meg to upgrade, which would make a 3gig system in excess of �30,000

[Ethel]

My first 'proper' pc was horrendously expensive, as was the printer.

Take in to account the much lower wages 20 years ago and they were even more expensive than at first sight.

[Gromit]

Just been in the Apple Store, and clicked top spec on the Mac Pro and it came to...


�12,812.99

[ChuckFickens]

Also hard drives used to be silly expensive, I remember buying my first one for a commodore Amiga, it was a 20mb hard drive and cost �250!

[Oneeyedvic]

I had an Atari 520 ST which I swapped (cost around �199 new) for a second hand CGA (4 colour) monitor to go with my 286 machine - which I purchased second hand in 1991 for �500.

It had a 20MB hard drive

Them were the days!

[Ethel]

You have to wonder, don't you?

My first pc had laughably low spec compared to current bog standard pcs.
But it did everything I bought it for - I could use the office software and even play games.

I think computers are like kitchen cupboards - the bigger they are, the more stuff you have to have

[chas2008]

many years ago i went on a budgeting course,we fed all the figures into a PC hit enter then went to lunch for an hour, with a bit of luck you had the answer when you came back the same calculations now would be achieved in miliseconds.

[ll_billym]

My first PC, a 386 33Mhz had a button on it to allow you to slow it down to 16MHz to play games that were too fast at the higher setting. Ha Ha Ha.

[beso]

My first laptop was an XT. You needed a big lap but it did have a full size keypoard.

Think that it would be an 086 ? Ran at 500KHz. Bought it in about 1988 or 89. Think it cost about $1200 and was a bargain.

It had 512K of RAM but was also available with 640K for another couple of hundred dollars.

It had an 80 character by 25 line LCD (maybe 8 inch) display. No backlighting meant you had to hold you head in exactly the right place to see it properly. Characters were blue on a green background or you could reverse it.

It had the new 3.25 inch 720K floppy drive (disks were $4 each). No hard disk though you could get a 10MB one for a small fortune. The operating system was DOS3.3 which fitted on one floppy with room to spare.

[jon1968]

Them were the days indeed! �13K for the Apple!! I really would want it to make the tea!
Not really a pc but when I was a nipper I had a ZX81 which had 1Kb on board memory and I had to wait for Santa to bring me the 16Kb brick that you slotted in the back! Gawd, I�m old!! :-))

This was all brought about by discussing the processing power of my friends I-phone and how fast things have moved on! Could one of you technically minded people could tell me how it compares to that Tandy PC?

[ChuckFickens]

Apple are pretty secretive about the exact specs of the Iphone but it is believed to have a 620mhz ARM CPU so it's clock speed is 31times faster than that tandy, though due to it being a more advnaced CPU it's real world working speed is probably much higher than 31 times the speed