As a kid I can remember people of modest income spending $2000 on a stereo system in 80s dollars ($6K now) just because they were excited about the specs (and probably had nothing else to buy to satisfy their equipment craving :)
Honestly this was the entire reason Commodore was a thing. An Apple //e cost infinity dollars in 1983, but you could get a C64 with a 1541 disk drive for about $400 and hook it up to your existing TV. Was your TV a good computer monitor? No. Was the 1541 slower than a tape drive? Yes. But: $400.
In some parallel universe, Commodore Business Machines _wasn't_ run by a succession of incompetent criminals and _didn't_ waste Jay Miner's best years and they now bestride the industry like a colossus and you're reading this on your AmigaOS-running handheld. But alas, in _this_ universe...
We had old hand me downs, or at least I did. Starting at the Coleco Adam and my C64... I didn't get a "new" computer until I built a 5x86 (thanks Cyrix) from parts in Computer Shopper magazine.
Absolutely brings back memories. Also the computer fairs. :) Parents bought my brother the Apple IIe- gave me an electronic typewriter with a small LCD screen. I went on to build my own.
because the paychecks people have did not adjust with inflation and stayed the same pretty much over time, that's how the rich get richer and poor get poorer
In high school, I knew 3 people with computers. Two of us had TRS-80 Color Computers, and the rich kid had a TRS-80 Model ]I[ (and a C-Band satellite dish in his yard).
In the early 80s very few people had them until computers like the C64, Atari 800XL etc. got really affordable -- and even then, you really had part of a computer. My 800XL didn't have a disk drive. If it wasn't on a cartridge, I couldn't use it.
And our first PC we got in the mid 80s because my dads employer provided it. It was nice too. 286 AT, 40 MB hard drive. 640Kb RAM if I remember correctly. Had a board that could draw CAD drawings with little pens. It was pretty cool.
They didn't. Or they had hand-me-downs from more affluent friends and family members.
My high school (mid-'90s) still ran their "computer science" class using decade-old Apple //es. Keyboarding/office productivity courses were taught with 5+ year old DOS software and hardware.
Before the Internet, everyone could — and did — get away with running 5+ (or even 10+) year old hardware and software. And why not? If it worked, it worked just as well as it did when it came out.
Turning every endpoint into an always on globally vulnerable security problem changed everything.
Scarcity combined with novelty/innovation. Much like TVs in the 50s.
I had one in the 80s as did my parents. My then 63 yr old father blew the minds of his friends when he received a bunch of JPGs of his newborn grandson in the Netherlands within an hour of his birth.
My dad was a computer engineer that worked on Apollo 11. We had the first computer of anyone I knew. Still can’t land an airplane after all those simulations.
Actually nobody had them. They were quite a fringe phenomenon for a very long time and it was almost seen as a hobby or a pastime for a good few years at first.
In 1997, I bought my first PC--an IBM 8088 with two floppy drives, no modem, and an amber-screened monitor--at a Chapter 7 liquidation sale. I paid around $2500.
The educational aspect people are calling out certainly played a role. Another is that it's comparable to today's buying cellphones for everyone in the family which get refreshed more frequently.
As a former poor kid, I can attest that everyone most certainly did not have them. Through luck and circumstance, I was able to get one and put it to good work.
Well, we didn't have Iphones, cell plans, or laptops for one thing. And we shared them as a household. And they came in kits some guy your dad knew built.
We got our first Intel 286 at home because my mom was able to access a program through her government job that partially subsidized home computers. I don't know all the details because I was a little kid, but that how we got ours.
I mean, a lot of us didn't. Of those of us that did, the pay to cost-of-living ratio accommodated that kind of luxury more readily; plus we kept them for ages and ages. It was an investment on the level of a home appliance. eMachines made bank on making home PCs *not* cost $7K inflation-adjusted
Everybody did not have computers. I graduated from college without a computer in 1996. Bought my first computer in 1999 during my master’s program. And I worked at Best Buy in college. Also did not own encyclopedias until my uncle died and we inherited his. They were out of date but awesome.
Nobody had them only rich people did until at least the mid nineties. I didn't get a home computer until then. The technology divide was a real concern. Its why schools all stood up computer labs at that time. I used a computer in school before I used one at home
I was a teen when we got our first computer (Windows Millennium) we had AOL dial up and my siblings & I proceeded to kill the damn thing by downloading songs from limewire 😆
I’m old enough to remember a situation where some kids had computers and other kids didn’t and the kids that had the computers had a massive advantage when it came Time to writing papers and reports
In 1980 my IBM was $2400. Most people didn't have a computer. There weren't any repair people. That is when I began learning how to fix my own issues. Books from the library were the go to resource. I turned it into a life long career.
Theory based on nothing; we needed mass buy in similar to the current solar panel push to allow for technology to have enough interest to support its development and setbacks enough to make computers more commercially viable.
I once asked that at uni and I turned into 'tell me without telling me that' meme even before it was a thing
The tell me: That your school was full of rich kids. Though in the UK in the late 90s Uni there were a lot of students soldiering on with old Amiga's for their personal computing needs.
Sadly this was before teh Amiga became a cool retro platform but thinking back - it was just incredible that the Amiga home computer that was built for ultra low cost 1991 computing could still fully handle a compsci student's workload in 1998. Imagine a 386 PC trying to do that!?
When my son was in 6th grade I told him if he got straight A’s all year I’d buy him a computer. Guess what! Yeah I had to finance the $6,000.00 fucking bucks 😂🤣
My mom was a programmer starting in the early 80s. Employer gave discounts to those who needed a computer for home. And you know people could afford shit back then.
We were only able to afford our first computer in the 1980s because of inheritance from a dead relative. And my dad was literally in tech (mainframes).
Almost no one had PCs until 1996. Most people had nothing at all, computer nerds and teenagers had Commodores and Ataris. 286s, 386s & 486s were business machines and cost a bomb. DOOM made all the nerds and teenagers want a PC, but none of us could afford one until the Pentium made 486s cheap.
Everybody didn't have them. Im 2000 about half the homes in the US had computers. In 2015, it rose to about 80%
There was a time, not long ago, when you had to ask a librarian to do an internet search for you, or had to go to a library (or work) to use a pc. Email was mostly B2B thru early 2000s.
My First Modem(TM) was a rip roaring 300 baud modem! And we were glad to have it! (Realizing this has a ”when I was a kid we walked to school in the snow uphill both ways” vibe lol.
I still have my 300 baud modem. I used it to log into my University's mainframe. I always got a kick out of telling a multimillion dollar computer to do data intensive things, then print in the library, with such a primitive setup.
I feel a bit dumb for asking, especially after some time passed since the post but what is this machine called? A model name is fine, I just want to learn more.
It's so easy to forget how expensive this used to be Anne how we needed to buy stuff like answering machine and VCRs and then we end up thinking that today everything sucks because graphics cards cost more this month
My parents talk about my grandparents renting household things like TVs by the month back in the 70s and neighbours crowding into one of the houses that had them for big events, it's weird to think of nowadays
In the 90s, families prioritized buying expensive PCs due to optimism about tech and access to credit. Today, rising costs and stagnant wages leave many struggling to afford basics. This highlights the need for systemic change—ensuring equitable access to resources for all, not just the privileged.
Depends what you mean by “early” and “everybody.” In the ‘80s, my family did have a Commodore, but a Mac was out of reach. I went to college with a Brother word processor, not a computer. (Lots of my classmates had Macs. I finally got my first one — a PowerBook laptop — in the ‘90s.)
Yep - I got the typewriter with the LCD screen (word processor) and my brother got the Apple IIe. Gifted at the same time. I was the older one and these were intended for us to use at 'college'. Joy. I eventually learned to build my own. He played a lot of games on that green screen.
That’s the one! I wrote a lot of papers on that thing (without distractions because it couldn’t do anything else😆). Printing took *forever* because it literally typed the pages.
Maybe they weren't so widespread back then but you only hear from people who actually had them? Maybe you should check how many of X computers have been sold
Yup. Also the economy was very different back then (1970s-80s)
My parents owned a house and had decently nice things. Dad was an electrician and mom worked retail part time. Prices of everything were more in-line with working class wages.
Things really have gone to shit in the last few decades.
My first was a no name from a computer show.
Very powerful HUGE monitor bought in 2000 for
$1500.
As a single parent of a teenage boy, that was huge $$$
Where I live, a car is unnecessary so I had the right amount in the bank. When I bought my first clone I knew no one who had one and had never touched one myself. Just figured a word processor had to be like pre-kindergarden-level cold-typesetting. I was right.
Everyone in a certain class did. I grew up with one, but until the early 90s I knew only a handful of families that had a computer. We had computer labs in school, which were exotic to most of my peers. I graduated HS in 98, and definitely had friends who didn't have a computer at that time.
This. My first computer was bought from a guy whose shop went belly-up. My first modem was a hand-me-down from a friend who was a nerd and had just *upgraded* to a 14.4k modem, but I lived a long way from any big cities, so all my costs went into my long distance phone bill for dialing up BBS's.
Yeah it was basically this. The local tolls were the worst. It was actually cheaper to call into, iirc, University of Wisconsin's gateway, than to call 40 mi down the road to a friend's BBS.
My dad got our first computer, probably refurbished. He was told it didn't work, & gave it to us as an xmas present, thinking maybe we could fix it. We had it running that morning; it was only a bios battery, the PC couldn't keep time while turned off & gave a prompt about it when booting up.
Late 80's/early 90s I was living in my parents basement saving up for a downpayment on a house. That took me 5 years because i was spending about $600 between my phone bill and online service (mostly Compu$serve) charges.
I did ok because when I was in my early teens I was stealing time on Compu$erve. Later the people who caught me ended up hiring me at another company for my first tech job.
Just like today, there were cheap and expensive computers pretty early on. Everything from $1,000ish in today's money on up.
When I was a kid most homes had one TV, and maybe 2, and there was never more than one computer in a household. We live in a completely different tech world.
I got my first home computer in 1993 (a Micron 486X, I think), and I was the only person in my age group from a working class background for a long time that had something more work than play-oriented. Hell, I have age peers that never bought a desktop or laptop, and just use their smartphones.
Early home computers were rare: only 200K of the popular PET were sold (1977, $4000 thanks Dad); normal families might have video game consoles (1976 Coleco, $300). Prices rapidly dropped; the VIC-20 (1980, $1100) sold millions. IBM PC ($5000, 1981) was for businesses. (Prices inflation-adjusted.)
My dad got a chance to use a PC at work and did weeks worth of inventory in a day. He immediately realized home computers were going to be huge and stretched our money so our family could have one, so we would grow up computer literate.
In retrospect, as soon as he realized that home computers were going to be huge, he should have stretched his money to invest all he could in Microsoft. THAT would have been a REALLY good call.
Without that first PC, nothing about my life today exists. I will ask him next time we're together whether he'd rather have $296k today (what the price of that PC invested into MS stock is worth) or for his kid to have a happy life & future.
As a parent myself, I think I know what he'll say 😁
I did the math and $1000 of Apple stock in 1986 is worth $1.6M today. But the problem with this math is, it only works if you never give up on the stock during the long price lulls, or when a family emergency comes up. And re: MS, you'd have to bet on the right horse, or end up with IBM/HP/Compaq.
My Dad got us an Apple IIC in '86, to use as a word processor for writing exams and research papers. We were a family of 6 living on one college professor salary, so this was a huge investment, but he worked 45 minutes away, so this allowed him to work from home. 38 years later, I'm a programmer.
My stepdad bought one but wouldn’t let us touch it because it was so expensive and he was worried we would break it. 😞 Didn’t stop me from sneaking time however.
When you would buy a computer its parts (memory,disk and other cards wee expensive to make) as technology advanced the cost went down. I remember i bought a 386 with 20 meg memory and a 20 gig hard drive for $3000
Absolutely! Civ 2 and Mechwarrior 2 on the family Pentium 120mhz running Win95 was absolutely a formative experience for me. I still remember how much better it ran once we upgraded to 32MB of EDO RAM...good times.
Ooh Mechwarrior 2. That opening intro video would play horribly on some low end PCs. Wheb first released, it was a good perf test of the PC, SVGA, and the CD drive.
Used the inflation calculator and the price has little more than doubled from 1989-1993. A computer that was $1,100 in 1989 would cost $2,800 today. A computer that was $950 in 1995 would cost $1,968 today.
Computers were very affordable. It's the internet that was hard to come by
LOTS of people didn’t have them. I finished a *CS* degree, established a career, and was finally able to purchase my first desktop (around $3500 at the time) when I was firmly established in my career and had two kids. And the purchase still gave me anxiety, machines were expensive AF back then.
yes and you had to effectively get a new one every couple years, too, or else it was woefully obsolete, unless your family was savvy enough to swap out individual components (mine wasn’t). Meanwhile fast forward to the future and I’ve had the same laptop since 2018 and it works fine
They weren’t that expensive or widespread. And inflation-adjusted, most everything else was cheaper (especially big stuff like housing and vehicles), and people didn’t have impulse-enabling pocket computers to siphon off their discretionary income.
Not everyone had them! For those who could afford them, they were totally awesome compared to the alternatives: typewriters, paper ledgers, and board games.
Beyond “not everybody had them,” which is also fair, people who could eke out the cost used computers at work and school and knew they were the future. I don’t think we have an equivalent tech to compare that to now.
as to why they were very $, surely you don't need instruction in how the amazing thing about industrial capitilism is that costs go down with volume; this was never before true in human history more or less
The first IBMs were over $5k without inflation. I had to buy a clone at 2k from Taiwan and later had to build my own when parts became a thing.
But EVERY thing else was cheaper. You could rent an apartment and pay tuition at a state college on a part time job.
Kids nowadays are screwed.
Well we used to own them, for starters. They were made in the US by people who earned a living wage. And they came with support. YUGE paper manuals. Oregon Trail. Also we could meet our friends at the airport gate, leave work at 5, and unironically listen to Van Halen on powerboats. Sigh.
I dunno, I think it’s come back around and we actually can enjoy Van Halen unironically on a powerboat. I don’t know anyone with a powerboat though, so this is speculative.
MECC was the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium, and it started with 20 school districts time-sharing a mainframe in 1968! Fast forward a few decades and MECC was spun out as a for-profit, ruined by private capital, and killed.
Depends on the year… but by the early 90s we had second hand stuff. So really you just threw a shitty one together. It wasn’t that expensive. Id guess my first decent out of box was like 2G in 98? About half and easily worth every penny
It was a status symbol, like who had a Pong video game. But in the late 70s it was not that common in Houston - I was one of the few among my friends to have a computer (Tandy) in our home.
In my case my Dad got a computer from work that he was allowed to have at home. Looking back at what I was allowed to do with it in the late 80's/early 90's I don't think most IS departments today would have been pleased (nothing illegal/NSFW, but dialing BBSs and random game installs).
I'm actually pretty sure the first computer anyone in my family actually bought was the 386 I bought used before heading to college in the summer of '93.
Paid just under $3K CAD in 1996, because I wanted my Grandson to have access to all that a computer could offer, in the way of educational games, sold on floppy discs.
For several years now, he's worked for a major entertainment company, in video games development, his dream come true. No regrets!
They were $1400 it wasn’t that bad. People weren’t spending $300 a month on a phone plan or $150-250 on television like they do now and don’t bat an eye.
Health insurance cost 1% of your income, rent 10%, gas, education, groceries… everything was less percent of your income … basic needs now take 70-90% of your income if you’re lucky 🤬
Look at it this way, where would we be by know if THEY DIDN'T?
One time a full-size TV cost the best part of a year's wages; in Europe we used to rent them ffs.
ME IN 2005: "I want a black reflective case with so many LEDs that I won't need a lamp in my room." ME IN 2024: I want a computer that looks like the one we had in 1987."
Mom had to plunk some serious cash, got an IBM clone from a Korean gray box shop in LA ~'88.
I think that's key: most people didn't have name brand, everyone went mom n pop gray boxes. Computer Shopper was full of ads with parts/prices, Dell was one of the first to sell for similar $.
Well, the inflation was higher than today BUT real wages were higher than they are today. That is, to maintain a comparable living standard to the 80s today, you need much more money - this is why consumer credit rose enormously to compensate the loss of purchasing power from the 80s to mid 00s.
Twelve percent, I saw a conventional thirty year closed at twenty three percent in 1983. Things were nuts. So many weird ass products ARMs and AMLs galore.
The inflation rate at any point in time has no bearing on the original statement. He was simply taking the price of the PC in the 1980s and raising it to today dollars. And, I don’t think it is incorrect since my dad bought a PC for like $3500 in the early 80s.
I was a fortunate kid. Mom was a real estate broker & she had a computer (+ acoustic modem, + dot matrix printer) at home so she didnt have to drive to the office to run MLS listings on the computer there. As long as I gave it over when needed, I could spend all nite on Prodigy, CompuServe or a BBS.
Hardly anyone comparatively had them.
The miracle of the IBM clone and swap meets
I got my first 286 around 1990 three years later and several swap meet generations later and it was my first Pentium 75
and on it goes Used and scavenged bits and bobs, building
for friends as it became more common.
because everybody was making like a quarter mil inflation adj. at their part-time jobs, and the cost of living was two rubber bands and a marble you found on the sidewalk
remember, this is back in the days when you could put yourself through college by working a single summer at a job chopping wood
WE NEEDED THEM TO HELP US DO OUR HOMEWORK. The fact they ran games was entirely irrelevant. Although I'm not sure I actually used a computer for actual homework until my second or third computer towards the end of my degree.
Ours was a $100 used one we bought from a friend inc a b/w monitor in the mid 90s. I remember it had a text editor and solitaire and was utterly fascinating to me. (My dad and I later built a more capable one from parts, which was a lot of fun)
Many schools put together computer labs because not every home had them. Once Windows 95 became the de facto OS and computers could be built by components, the prices came down.
Please define "early home computers" because back in my day, no one had a home computer (even the rich kids). They had Atari game consoles if they were fortunate.
No cell phone and service bill helps. No streaming platforms subscriptions. Cable TV wasn't rare but it wasn't ubiquitous and I could be wrong but I don't think it cost as much relatively before channel pricing went crazy
One of my great frustrations is how literally everything wants to sell you monthly subscriptions these days, even, and sometimes especially, once you've bought their product. Cars, speakers, literally effing composters! I actively vote with my wallet against this but it is seemingly getting harder
We left a system where we were paying $30-50 a month for cable to a system that was $5.99.
A decade later we’re paying more for for streaming than we did for cable and you can’t go back to cable because they upped the price to counter losses from cord cutters.
Comments
There were fewer 'replacement goods' in consumer electronics to spend your money on back then.
When it came to electronics you mainly had stereos, TVs, computers. Computers did inspire more lust than they do now, thus more $ justification.
"Why is everyone buying $50,000 SUVs today"
I think all of these things require significant hand waving of what counts as "everyone"
My high school (mid-'90s) still ran their "computer science" class using decade-old Apple //es. Keyboarding/office productivity courses were taught with 5+ year old DOS software and hardware.
Turning every endpoint into an always on globally vulnerable security problem changed everything.
I had one in the 80s as did my parents. My then 63 yr old father blew the minds of his friends when he received a bunch of JPGs of his newborn grandson in the Netherlands within an hour of his birth.
You DON’T Want to know what I paid for it.
Best investment I ever made.
It launched my IT career. Owning a home computer back then almost an IT job anywhere. That and having this on my bookshelf.
The people that had them became the "everybody" you know.
Meanwhile, we had Commodore 64s, VIC 20s, TI-99/4a, and so on.
A Commodore 64 cost less than $1000 modern dollars.
The tell me: That your school was full of rich kids. Though in the UK in the late 90s Uni there were a lot of students soldiering on with old Amiga's for their personal computing needs.
Now you understand … 😇
There was a time, not long ago, when you had to ask a librarian to do an internet search for you, or had to go to a library (or work) to use a pc. Email was mostly B2B thru early 2000s.
28.8kb dial-up modem. Those were the days.
😆
He used it to play a game based on Star Trek.
😎
😆
And I did the uphill thing, too. 😎
It had a teletype and punch tape reader.
A friend of mine in the 80s had the same computer Clark Griswold used in 𝑉𝑎𝑐𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛.
Also, the economy was radically different in that time. Just the beginnings of the mess we are dealing with now
"everybody" did not have them.
There were few and far between.
But definitely in the early 80s every kid on my block got a VIC 20 one Xmas. (After the C64 was out and VIC 20s were going for $79 at Canadian Tire.)
I bought an Amiga 1010 floppy drive in 1991 that has been on the shelf there, at full MSRP, since 1985.
My parents owned a house and had decently nice things. Dad was an electrician and mom worked retail part time. Prices of everything were more in-line with working class wages.
Things really have gone to shit in the last few decades.
Very powerful HUGE monitor bought in 2000 for
$1500.
As a single parent of a teenage boy, that was huge $$$
(I was also the weirdo who bought his own computer at 16, instead of getting a license and a car, which is why I didn't have a license until I was 32)
A C64 was less than half the price of an Apple IIe, too, though, so it's closer to like having a ps5 now
Toll call part killed me. $50 for aol and $300 for the calls!
When I was a kid most homes had one TV, and maybe 2, and there was never more than one computer in a household. We live in a completely different tech world.
I was still dialing up on a 56k modem with a MacII ci, when all my friends were rocking a Pentium3 or overclocked Athlons.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM
Really good call, in hindsight.
As a parent myself, I think I know what he'll say 😁
Especially for ME, who did crappy in school but loved to learn on my own, this was a life changer.
Glad he was able to do that for you.
Bet he’d do it again in a heartbeat.
Magic times!
Computers were very affordable. It's the internet that was hard to come by
With how fast they became obsolete in those days, I wonder if that translated into many more used computers being available? 🤔
Also, it was the 1980s, and post-war austerity seemed finally to be ending.
geez, why do I have to do basic research to correct the factual errors in your post ?
this took about 5 seconds on google
really, honestly ???
as to why they were very $, surely you don't need instruction in how the amazing thing about industrial capitilism is that costs go down with volume; this was never before true in human history more or less
But EVERY thing else was cheaper. You could rent an apartment and pay tuition at a state college on a part time job.
Kids nowadays are screwed.
As long as it was publicly owned, MECC thrived.
For several years now, he's worked for a major entertainment company, in video games development, his dream come true. No regrets!
At least until the late '90s.
One time a full-size TV cost the best part of a year's wages; in Europe we used to rent them ffs.
I think that's key: most people didn't have name brand, everyone went mom n pop gray boxes. Computer Shopper was full of ads with parts/prices, Dell was one of the first to sell for similar $.
🤦 Note to self: do not post when half asleep. 😂
....
Yeah, no.
COST of LIVING was lower in the 1989's and 1990's.
The miracle of the IBM clone and swap meets
I got my first 286 around 1990 three years later and several swap meet generations later and it was my first Pentium 75
and on it goes Used and scavenged bits and bobs, building
for friends as it became more common.
remember, this is back in the days when you could put yourself through college by working a single summer at a job chopping wood
They weren’t common place at all until the price dropped a LOT.
ZX spectrum launched in ‘82 (when most people still didn’t have computers) at £557 inflation adjusted.
Nowadays a 3 year old computer is still quite good
💙💙💙🌈🌈🌈💙💙💙
We pay for a lot of stuff today that didn't exist in the past.
This meant that people of the past, even though they made much less, they could have had more disposable income at the end of the month.
We left a system where we were paying $30-50 a month for cable to a system that was $5.99.
A decade later we’re paying more for for streaming than we did for cable and you can’t go back to cable because they upped the price to counter losses from cord cutters.
Same with video: Top Gun was the first "cheap" VHS tape at $80.
(All prices adjusted for inflation.)
I saved up and spent $850 on a C=64 with monitor and disk drive, but that was after the flood of 6502s hit the market.