evolution of technology/cost

[shesgotthepic]

I remember when my first 512mb card cost about £100. Then the 1g card came out and I coveted one. Finally bit the bullet last year at costco in canada and thought I had gotten a bargain despite it not being an ultra, only to come back to UK, check costco here and find the 1g ultra II for less!!! So I got two of those as well.

Last year I was dreaming about getting a 4g ultra III. Way out of my price range.

Was rumaging through the basement to find the binder with all my slides. Found a "Digital Photography" mag in a the same box with an article about concert photography. Flicked through it and found stuff on stuff. Reviews of a Lexar 4GB CF card for the princely sum of £899!!!!

I think the mag is 2 years old. 3 at a push.

I laughed, considering what you can get them for now.

She

[cosworth]

My camera was about $8000 CDN new. I still freak that I own one. You can buy it for $2000 USD all day long now.

Not only does new stuff become cheaper, the expensive stuff that is a bit older is amazing to look back on. Imagine the owner of that 4gb card when he sees the prices now.

[KevC]

When I bought my 256MB card about 5 years ago, it was like $200! hahaha. I'm still surprised how cheap 2GB cards are nowadays. $35-what?!

I agree with Jason. My camera was about that much when it was new. You can buy it for about $900USD now too =)

[rklepper]

My first computer had no hard drive, just 2 floppy drives. I bought a hard drive for it that was 20 MB and it cost me $279. (yes you read that right 20 MB, not GB)

[coreypolis]

we paid $2600 for a D30, 3.4mp, sold it for $300. That hurt

[Moppie]

My first computer had no hard drive, just 2 floppy drives. I bought a hard drive for it that was 20 MB and it cost me $279. (yes you read that right 20 MB, not GB)

My first computer didn't even have a hard drive, just a tape drive :D
We had to wait for the disc drive to be released and come down in price before we could get one.

Now Iv got over a 1/3 of a tera byte in harddrives, a CD drive, a DVD drive but no disc drive!

[-Pleiades-]

I find it really depressing. I was saying the same thing to my other half the other night. I had my old 512 card that died a year or so ago that I paid some ridiculous amount for, I can't now get 4 gig for the same price.

But even comparing new technology prices with old. For example my 300D new with battery grip cost me $2500 maybe 2 years ago, now if you want to buy the 400D with grip and a 2 lens kit I saw one advertised today for $1600. *shakes head*

[20droger]

My first computer didn't even have a hard drive, just a tape drive :D
We had to wait for the disc drive to be released and come down in price before we could get one.

Now Iv got over a 1/3 of a tera byte in harddrives, a CD drive, a DVD drive but no disc drive!
Well, if we're going for old computers, the first computer I ever programmed belonged to the US Army. It was made by Honeywell, and used vacuum tubes (valves, to you UK types). It had 1024 6-bit bytes of dynamic RAM consisting of 6,144 twin-triodes coupled in Eccles-Jordan circuits.

The primary (indeed, only) purposes of this machine was in-stream data encryption and decryption for troposcatter communications (a now completely obsolete technology).

The first "microcomputer" I ever programmed was an industrial controller using an 8008 as a cpu, with 4 KB of dynamic ram. It was programmed with a deck of Hollerith cards.

The first computer I ever owned was a modified MITS Altair, with an 8080 as the central processor and 16 KB of dynamic RAM. It was entirely home-built, using S-100 bus cards.

It had no boot ROM. Instead, it had a "front panel" with 8 data switches, a reset button, a step button, and a run-step switch. You powered it up by flipping the run-step switch to "step," resetting it, then entering the data one byte at a time on the data switches and pressing "step" each time. After 36 steps, it was smart enought to read a paper-tape reader, so you could load the OS tape and flip the run-step switch to "run." It would then read the paper tape and load its operating system, which was CP/M 1.2.

Once the OS was loaded, you could then load something practical, like 4K BASIC, so you could do something.

I/O was through an old teletype (actually, a Telex terminal) I had picked up surplus. The I/O data rate was 55 Baud.

Eventually, I graduated from paper tape to audio cassette, and ultimately 8" 256 KB floppy disks. Can you imagine it?!! 256 KB on a single disk!

By the time I retired the "Blue Box," the 8080 had been upped to a Z80, I had dual floppies, a CRT, a keyboard, and a real printer. CRT communication was 2400 Baud serial, The keyboard was memory-mapped.

Ah, those were the good old days, when a nerd was a nerd and damned proud of it!

And to those of you out there who were of the "beautiful people" and loved to pick on and sneer at us nerds, we nerds went on to own you, and don't forget it! Think about it. The banker who holds your mortgage--and really owns your house--was one of us, not one of you. Aren't you glad we don't hold grudges? If we did, you'd be homeless.

[gjl711]

My first programming job was on the TMS1000 It had a whopping 1K of ROM and 64 nibbles (4 bit words for you kids) or RAM. My first home box was the original Apple. It came with 16K but I quickly bought and additional 48K for $2000. I though I had all the RAM I would ever need. That didn’t last long.

These days, I never live on the bleeding edge any more. It’s just too expensive. Why pay $800 for a chip that in a year will be less than $100. I just wait. It’s the same with processors. Look for the price knee. When it shoots up, back off one and that’s the best value.

[20droger]

My first programming job was on the TMS1000 It had a whopping 1K of ROM and 64 nibbles (4 bit words for you kids) or RAM. My first home box was the original Apple. It came with 16K but I quickly bought and additional 48K for $2000. I though I had all the RAM I would ever need. That didn’t last long.

These days, I never live on the bleeding edge any more. It’s just too expensive. Why pay $800 for a chip that in a year will be less than $100. I just wait. It’s the same with processors. Look for the price knee. When it shoots up, back off one and that’s the best value.
Ah, yes! 64 KB of RAM! Why would anyone ever need more?

Same mistake Intel made when they designed the 8086. Map all the hardware just south of the 1 MB boundary. No-one will ever need more than 1 MB for anything. And while were at it, let's boot at the top of memory instead of the bottom. That'll leave the bottom free for applications, such as that memory-hungry Wordstar (22 KB program size, indeed! Who do they think they are?)

Yup! That was brilliant decision!

[greg20d]

My first computer had no hard drive, just 2 floppy drives. I bought a hard drive for it that was 20 MB and it cost me $279. (yes you read that right 20 MB, not GB)
I had one of those ..256 computers we added a hard drive the whole thing cost $6000.... wanna buy it for half ????? lol

[aussieskier]

If only computer ram was following some of these trends!