Remember When Mac's costed ....

[cablemel]

clicking around the net and came across this page, just makes me quiver seeing a PowerMac 8500 for $3000 :P .. oh how time flies ...

Old For Sale Mac Page (http://web.mit.edu/is/isnews/v11/n06/41709.html)

[johnnyjibbs]

Just one of the reasons why I am typing on my first Macintosh.. Good to see Macs are nicely priced these days!

[gwuMACaddict]

mmmmm... laser writer... i still have an old 800 or someting that works, hooked up to an old performa... i looooove that thing...

[Opteron]

While that is a scary number, esp when you relaise that $300 then was alot more than $3000 these days.

Remembe rthough that when that computer was released that it was the "Bee's Knees" and had no desktop equal.

[jefhatfield]

my entry level 1999 ibook...$1599 usd, cd-rom, 3 gig hard drive, 300 mhz g3, 32 megs of sdram

today's entry level ibook...$1099 usd, combo drive, 30 gig hd, 800 mhz g4, 256 megs of ddr ram



my 1999 entry level presario laptop...$1599/cd-rom/4.3 gb hd/366 mhz k6-2/32 mb sdram

today's comparable entry presario...$799-899/combo drive/30 gb hd/2.4 ghz celeron/256 mb ddr ram


basically prices everywhere have come down and while the mac prices have come way down from just a few years ago, they have not kept pace with the pc world's discounting

what i would like to see are $799-899 usd ibooks a couple of years from now and the way things have come dwon from sisteen hundred bucks in 1999, i think a cheap ibook way under a grand is a possibility

[Macmaniac]

LOL this is really funny for me.
PowerBook 5300c/100 16/750
16MB RAM, 1MB VRAM, 750MB hard drive MIT $3410
I got this from a school for free last year, they were going to throw it out, just goes to show you how far we have come!

[Simon Liquid]

As far as Macs are concerned, the price has gone down a little, the value has gone up a lot. What I think is even funnier is RAM prices. I still have a MicroWarehouse catalog that came with my Performa that's just RAM. Unfortunately it's buried right now or I'd quote it, but I usually find it when I clean my room every couple of years and it makes me laugh harder each time.

[jefhatfield]

time life magazine was one of the organizations that recognized steve wozniak as the inventor of the personal computer...as we know it

when i was teaching a networking class and i mentioned this honor bestowed on the great woz, one student (a retired computer industry worker) disagreed with me and told me a year before the apple II, he had a motocycle sized personal computer which weighed hundreds of pounds and cost him $15,000 dollars...basically a year's salary as an engineer

compared to the room sized machines costing millions of dollars, his puppy was a small, compact, personal computer

[jefhatfield]

time life magazine was one of the organizations that recognized steve wozniak as the inventor of the personal computer...as we know it

when i was teaching a networking class and i mentioned this honor bestowed on the great woz, one student (a retired computer industry worker) disagreed with me and told me a year before the apple II, he had a motocycle sized personal computer which weighed hundreds of pounds and cost him $15,000 dollars...basically a year's salary as an engineer

compared to the room sized machines costing millions of dollars, his puppy was a small, compact, personal computer

when i mentioned the first early computers using electricity and vacuum tubes, he objected and told me about the first looms and called those the first true computers

my phd mentor goes back even further and says the first computer was the abacus and any other theory saying the computer came later is basically rubbish and not reverent of the abacus and how it changed society

i once worked at the defense department and my boss was one of the inventors of the internet called arpanet, but when he explained the context of arpanet, he laughed at all the scholars/historians who were not there during arpanet who tried to tie in the internet with arpanet as some sort of related predecessor...it would be like saying that some indiginous tribesman who hit a rock with a stick invented modern baseball

history is all about spin and point of view but when i teach classes i still stick with the text/quick and easy one page guide and call woz the inventor of the home computer and arpanet the first real internet even though i know there are those who know a lot more than me who strongly object

[cb911]

hehe. i sure am glad that hardware prices have come down.

i remember my good 'ol TiBook 667 cost me about AU$5500 (can't remember if that was with extra 512MB RAM), and that was when the 800MHz was the top model, so for that you'd be paying about $6000.

now i've just got a new (! :D !) 1.25GHz PB, i think it cost around AU$4400. BTW, all prices i've mentioned are with edu discount!

sure is good to see lots more PB's around... the dropping prices would definitely have had something to do with that.

[MrMacMan]

Wow...

I bet my iMac 233 will rise in price any day now...

come on...

Rise in price again!

;)

[cablemel]

:D :D Oh, for what have i started! :D :D

[themadchemist]

Originally posted by Opteron
While that is a scary number, esp when you relaise that $300 then was alot more than $3000 these days.

Remembe rthough that when that computer was released that it was the "Bee's Knees" and had no desktop equal.

that's quite a bit of an exaggeration. I'm pretty sure that 8 years has not brought us ten-fold inflation.

[jefhatfield]

Originally posted by themadchemist
that's quite a bit of an exaggeration. I'm pretty sure that 8 years has not brought us ten-fold inflation.

unless we are talking about britney spears tickets:p

one thing i have seen go up four times in eight years has been salmon and i have no idea what the heck happened??

[virividox]

im glad apples are getting cheaper, not as cheap as we hope, but every little bit helps

[G4scott]

I think my parent's first laptop, a PowerBook 145b, costed them over $4000 USD. That was a 25mhz laptop with a monochromatic screen.... Of course, it was awesome at the time... Just this Christmas, we got our grandparents an eMac for like, $499. It was an older model, but still. And it came with a free printer too. It's funny, because only 2 of the Apple computers my family has owned, haven't been sold to someone else. They are the 145b, and a Performa 600CD. The laptop started doing some funny stuff, but for a 10 year old laptop, I think it's seen more than it's fair share of usage. The Performa 600CD worked fine until I took it apart... Of course, this was after we picked up a Performa 6400... All of our other computers went on to further usage after my family was done with them. Our Apple IIe went to the local museum, the Performa 6400 got sold, and our old 400mhz G4 got traded in for $500 off the purchase of our new, dual 1ghz G4... I have seen no PC's get as much usage as any of the Macs our family has owned. It's amazing. Macs truly are built to last, although they were quite expensive back in the day...

Remember when the PowerBook G3's costed over $5000 for the top of the line model with a DVD Player?

[themadchemist]

Originally posted by jefhatfield
unless we are talking about britney spears tickets:p

one thing i have seen go up four times in eight years has been salmon and i have no idea what the heck happened??

Or Britney Spears'...you figure it out.

But seriously, I think that Opteron probably meant 3000 instead of 300...Maybe a typo or something. My bad for being an ass about it.

[Opteron]

Originally posted by themadchemist
that's quite a bit of an exaggeration. I'm pretty sure that 8 years has not brought us ten-fold inflation.

Sorry about the typo, I ment $3000 8 years ago was alot more than $3000 today.;)

[themadchemist]

Originally posted by Opteron
Sorry about the typo, I ment $3000 8 years ago was alot more than $3000 today.;)

As I said, I thought about it later (after posting) and realized the mistake you made...No problem, sorry about calling you on a typo.

[coopdog]

"Costed"? :confused: :p