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1988 vs 2008

Think the iPhone is pricey? The cool cell phone of 1988 cost $4,382 in today's dollars. A 150MB hard drive? $8,755. Take a trip with us down memory lane and you'll never whine about the price of a gadget again.

Ever wax nostalgic about your first PC or cell phone? It's easy to forgive your Tandy desktop or your Motorola portable for their limitations -- after all, they were technological infants.

What we often forget, though, is how $%#@! expensive that crude neolithic junk was! So join us on a trip two decades back in technology's history -- and we bet that the next time you're charged $895 for a small square of plastic and transistors, you'll smile and say, "Wow, what a bargain!"

Home Desktop PCs

Tandy 1000 TL

 1988: Tandy 1000 TL

  • Price: $1,400 ($2,454 adjusted for inflation)
  • CPU: Intel 80286
  • RAM: 640KB
  • Storage: 3.5-inch floppy
  • Monitor: 14-inch, 640-by-200 RGB CRT, 16 colors  
 
HP Pavilion Elite m9100z series

2008: HP Pavilion Elite m9100z series

  • Price: about $1,000
  • CPU: 2.8-GHz AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ dual-core
  • RAM: 2GB
  • Storage: 750GB HD, CD/DVD recorder
  • Monitor: 17-inch, 1440-by-900 LCD, 16.7 million colors

 

Laptop PCs
Toshiba T1200H

1988:Toshiba T1200H

  • Price: $4,098 ($7,182 adjusted for inflation)
  • CPU: 4.77-/9.54-MHz Intel 80C86
  • RAM: 1MB
  • Storage: 20MB hard drive, 720KB floppy drive
  • Display: 9.4-inch supertwist LCD
  • Weight: 14 pounds (including modem, charger, and case)
  • Battery life: 2 hours
Lenovo ThinkPad X61

2008:Lenovo ThinkPad X61

  • Price: $1,724
  • CPU: 2-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300
  • RAM: 2GB
  • Storage: 160GB HD, PC Card slot, SD Card slot, external CD/DVD recorder
  • Display: 12.1-inch 1024-by-768 LCD, 16.7 million colors
  • Weight: 3.6 pounds (6.1 pounds including adapter, ultrabase, and DVD burner)
  • Battery life: 6 hours

 

Color Printers
Alps ALQ300
1988: AlpsALQ300
  • Price: $995 ($1,744 adjusted for inflation)
  • Printhead: 24-pin color dot-matrix
  • Speed: 31 seconds/page in letter-quality mode, up to 10 minutes/page for color graphics
  • Interface: Serial
Canon Pixma iP3500
2008: Canon Pixma iP3500
  • Price: $80
  • Printhead: 4800-by-1200-dpi color, 1,600 nozzles
  • Speed: as fast as 3.5 seconds/page in color
  • Interface: USB 2.0 and PictBridge

 

Internet Access
CompuServe
1988: CompuServe
  • Price: $6.00 to $47.50 per hour ($11 to $83 adjusted for inflation)
  • Connection: dial-up
  • Speed: 300 to 9,600 baud
  • Services: 400 databases, covering news, shopping, finance and the like; 140 discussion groups, e-mail
AT&T Elite DSL
2008: AT&T Elite DSL
  • Price: $35 per month
  • Connection: Digital Subscriber Line
  • Speed: 6 mbps
  • Services: nearly anything you can imagine

 

Cell Phones
Motorola DynaTAC 8500XL
1988: Motorola DynaTAC 8500XL
  • Price: $2,500 ($4,382 adjusted for inflation)
  • Technology: analog
  • Weight: 28 ounces
  • Talk time: one hour
Apple iPhone
2008: Apple iPhone
  • Price: $399 (with two-year service agreement)
  • Technology: EDGE/GSM quad-band
  • Weight: 5 ounces
  • Talk time: eight hours

 

Big-Screen TVs
Mitsubishi Diamond Vision II 3503
1988: Mitsubishi Diamond Vision II 3503
  • Price: $3,000 ($5,258 adjusted for inflation)
  • Size: 35 inches
  • Resolution: 480 lines, interlaced
  • Format: NTSC
  • Display technology: CRT
Panasonic TH-50PZ77U HDTV
2008: Panasonic TH-50PZ77U HDTV
  • Price: $2,300
  • Size: 50 inches
  • Resolution: 1080 lines, progressive scan
  • Format: ATSC
  • Display technology: plasma

 

Video Players
Pioneer CLD-1010 Laserdisc Player
1988: Pioneer CLD-1010 Laserdisc Player
  • Price: $1,427 ($2,278 adjusted for inflation)
  • Resolution: 420-line
  • Output: composite
  • Media supported: Laserdisc, CD-audio, CD-video
Panasonic DMP-BD30K Blu-ray Disc Player
2008: Panasonic DMP-BD30K Blu-ray Disc Player
  • Price: $500
  • Resolution: 1080-line
  • Output: HDMI
  • Media supported: Blu-ray 1.1, DVD (with upscaling), CD

 

Portable Audio Players
Sony Discman D-10
1988: Sony Discman D-10
  • Price: $350 ($613 adjusted for inflation)
  • Format: CD-audio
  • Capacity: 650MB or 70 minutes
  • Batterylife: 4 hours
  • Weight: 14 ounces 
Apple iPod Touch
 2008: Apple iPod Touch
  • Price: $299
  • Formats: AAC/MP3/AIFF/WAV/ lossless audio
  • Capacity: 8GB or 87 hours
  • Batterylife: 22 hours of audio or 5 hours video
  • Weight: 4.2 ounces

 

Game Consoles
Nintendo NES
1988: Nintendo NES
  • Price: $200 ($351 adjusted for inflation)
  • CPU: 1.79-MHz 8-bit
  • RAM: 2KB
  • Game format: cartridge
Sony PlayStation 3 40GB
2008: Sony PlayStation 3 40GB
  • Price: $399
  • CPU: 3.2-GHz cell
  • RAM: 256MB
  • Game format: optical- and hard-disk-based games with Internet connectivity