Cost of a 128KB computer with floppies in 1985

Okalaydokalay, 10 months ago

Apple is the second cheapest option. Damn, times have changed, for sure.

thbb, 10 months ago

It says it has a "high res monitor". For having learned to program graphics on this machine, we had to count the pixels to be able to fit our drawings in the screen: 512x342, that's not a lot of screen real estate. The 640x480 PC screen was a luxury.

GigglyBobble, 10 months ago

And today that's an icon.

Fermiverse, 10 months ago

And to add it was the most advanced device compared to the others. Full mouse support, graphical interface, WYSIWYG , it was a true gamechanger.

Had a used one myself and soldered RAM chips on the MB to make it a fat Mac with 4MB RAM . Boot disk system was copied to a RAM disk after boot. Good times

Num10ck, 10 months ago

i’m surprised nobody is mentioning that the keyboards in these were masterpieces that are so valuable today.

webghost0101, 10 months ago

Interestingly mac is the only one with a mouse.

Oisteink, 10 months ago

Not very surprising considering their inspiration from xerox parc. I bought a mouse in 86 for my dads pc - a 3 button Genius. On PC mouse would not take off until windows was launched - gui was not needed for real business use according to IBM

anlumo, 10 months ago

That mouse was so uncomfortable. It was built like a box, probably designed for a robot hand.

Oisteink, 10 months ago

Yep - but it was the only one available in my area of Norway at the time (I got mine for under 500 NOK because the supplier did wrong. As I was just a kid he let it slide and I got to keep it. There was some painting software supplied as well. That guy went on to be one of Norways biggest producers of pc’s - REC computers

Hamartiogonic, 10 months ago

Apple was a very different company back then. If they had followed the philosophy they have today, Apple would have been the last company to to introduce a mouse. The idea is that if a new feature becoms industry standard, they won’t apply it until like 5 years later, but make it somehow better than anyone else.

In this context, it would have probably meant not including a keyboard or display at this point. They could have skipped the black+green stage and go straight for color displays while increasing the resolution, size and refresh rate or something.

squaresinger, 10 months ago

Waiting 5 years wasn’t really an option back in those days. PCs moved so fast that if you waited 5 years you’d be missing whole use cases.

Now if you wait 5 years, there’s hardly a difference.

Nioxic, 10 months ago

My father bought a family pc for 1500ish euros (or equal to that amount) vack in… 1990 or something. With a 386 cpu.

It was great. Though im not sure if the inflation is equal, in my country

BeigeAgenda, 10 months ago

Was Olivetti any good at that time?

Psythik, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

Psh, $5700 and they don’t even come with a 4090.

Seriously, though, it’s no wonder why businesses had most of computers in the 80s; these companies were ripping people the hell off and getting away with it. Nearly $6 grand and you don’t even get a hard drive, nor a reasonable amount of RAM. Give me a fucking break.

HakFoo, 10 months ago

Don’t get the Sanyo. It’s a weird “sorta DOS compatible” machine you’ll have a hard time with software and support for.

The Apricot was also exotic, but seemed to have more of an ecosystem.

Hovenko, 10 months ago

Those are antiques now so the might cost a lot as well

espentan, 10 months ago

Two years later you could get an Amiga 500, with 512KB for £499. They were such a deal when they arrived. I bought a 20MB hard drive, an extra 512KB of RAM, a second floppy drive and a monitor. If I recall correctly that set me back around £1400.