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Raw Bytes Computer News KPBX FM 91.1 Radio National Public Radio Network Frank Delaney Producer Broadcast on Wednesday Morning 7:35 AM During Morning Edition Support Public Radio ! The Theater Of the Mind |
In computer news this week 01/23
/2008 My new computer and a 20 year
comparison. I recently
got a new business computer, and realized that I just passed my 20th
year in business from when I bought my first business computer, so I thought
I’d do a historic comparison of price and features. My first
business computer I bought in 1987; it was a Gateway 2000, and at the time Gateway was just emerging as a
major vendor, while the big vendor was Northgate computers. I paid almost $ 3000 for it with no sales tax as you didn’t pay that on
mail order in those days, and I think I remember the specs: 80386
Processor 1 Mb of
RAM 5.25 and
3.5” Floppy disks 150 Mb
Hard Disk 28K modem VGA
monitor MSDOS 3.3
operating system At the
time the major word processor was Word perfect, which had replaced Wordstar, and I also used a suite of Borland software
products which included their Paradox Dos database which I programmed in, and
their Quattro Pro spreadsheet.
The graphics generation was VGA – for the first time you could
see a picture on the screen that looked almost real, and the modem speed was
28 K. My new
computer is a Dell Inspiron 530, and it’s the 3rd Dell
I’ve bought for myself. I feel Gateway is now into consumer electronics
more, and Dell is still my computer of choice. I paid about $ 1300 for it including sales tax. Intel
core 2 Quad Processor running at
2.4 Gigahertz 3 Gigs of
Dual Channel Sdram – that’s like 3000 times more Ram than my first computer 500 Gig
(half terabyte) hard disk -
that’s like 3400 times more
Hard Disk space than my first
computer No floppy
drive – but I have 6 usb ports and many flash drives A dvd r/w
drive and a cd r/w drive – those weren’t around in 1987 This
still has a 56 K modem in it, which I’ll never use, as I have hi-speed
internet and peer to peer
networking Windows
vista home premium operating system Samsung
22” LCD monitor – let me tell you – this is like being at a
drive-in movie, folks. My browser’s home page is set to Google, and
that white screen lights up my office at night better than a lamp. Over the
years computers have evolved in speed and complexity, and next week
I’ll talk about what I wanted in a new computer, and the real time
benchmarks I’ve done between my new computer and my current Pentium 4
computer. |
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For Raw Bytes This is Frank Delaney (C) 2008 MTA Micro
Technology Associates http://www.mtamicro.com/kpbx.html PO Box 31522 Spokane, Wa 99223-1522 (509)624-7230 |
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