A Technological Retrospective

Okay, this isn’t really a Tech Tip; it’s more like a Tech Factoid, but interesting enough to share it with you because we were blown away ourselves by these figures. As we are moving fromgigabyte storage to terabyte storage at an unbelievable rate, it’s worth noting just how lucky we are that the equipment we use actually is amazingly affordable. Yup, technology is actually getting cheaper! Twenty years ago (or 1988 if you’re as bad at math as we are), a 150 megabyte hard drive (if you could even find one) would have roughly cost you in today’s dollars (based on the U.S. Treasury inflation formula) a budget-busting $8,700! Today, a one terabyte hard drive averages a paltry $325. In 1988, if you wanted e-mail or access to discussion boards or various databases, CompuServe dial-up service could have cost you up to $80 per hour depending upon where you lived (that’s adjusted to take into account inflation, of course). What’s more, downloads were often as slow as 300 baud! Today a broadband DSL connection runs about $35 a month and cable roughly $45. America Online didn’t arrive until 1989 (for Mac only) and wasn’t available for PCs until 1991 with a Windows version released in 1993!