Blog: Looking back at a PC from 1994 - RAM, CPU, HDD Specs and price

[menotu]

Posted on PCPro - 12 Oct 2012

We republish the first ever PC review to appear in PC Pro back in 1994

The supplied 4MB of RAM was "far too little for 1994-sized packages", leaving Windows for Workgroups feeling "decidedly wobbly" and bringing Word 6 "to its knees".

It scored only two out of six overall, with Jon concluding that "you can make it too cheap". Too cheap in 1994 being £1,409 inc VAT - which taking 18 years of inflation into account would be roughly £2,350 today.

By comparison our current A-List budget PC, the Palicomp Phoenix i5 Destiny costs only £699 inc VAT. The Palicomp's processor clock speed is 58 times faster than the 60MHz Pentium in the ESCOM; it has over 1,000 times more RAM; and more than 2,500 times the hard disk capacity. references to 4Mb of RAM and a 406Mb hard disk, instead of 4MB of RAM and a 406MB hard disk.

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/377527/the-first-pc-review-ever-published-in-pc-pro

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The full (Oct 2012) magazine article mentioned that if the same inflation ratio were followed the price of a PC in 2030 would be approx £30

[gandy]

It's amazing how speeds and capacity have increased over the years. I'm reminded of the TV show The Screensavers. In 1998 they built the "Ultimate Gaming Machine 1.0". Here's the clip from that show.

The Screen Savers - Ultimate Gaming Machine Version 1.0

[Just17]

Way back then ...... much to my annoyance now .......  I paid close to £2,500 for a Pentium Pro machine, with good speakers (which I still use).

My phone is more powerful than that was ......     .....  with more memory .......  and more storage ..... and cost less than 1/10 th the price and probably much less if inflation is taken into account .....

That was the last PC I bought for myself/my business ......

[dixonpete]

I can remember heading out and spending $50 for 1MB of RAM. Current Boxing Day price at my local computer store today for 8GB of RAM? $29..

[YouCanToo]

I can remember heading out and spending $50 for 1MB of RAM. Current Boxing Day price at my local computer store today for 8GB pf RAM? $29..

Sheesh, $50 for 1 meg of ram was cheap  When I was working for Sequent Computers we were producing 16 meg daughter boards. At that time we were still using DIP (Dual Inline Packages)  chips and it took 9 chips to make a meg of memory. At that time each chip cost $32.00.  So it took 144-1 meg DIP's to make the board or a cost of $4,068.00 for the memory alone.  This was just before the 30 pin SIMM module came to being.