Do You Think I Should Buy This PC?

[Bing Fung]

What do you think... Is it worth it?



That would have been a lot of cash pack in '89 :E




Bing

[Trevor Schell]

:E:E:E




Trevor
My HomeTheater S.E.
Sonically Enhanced
C5

[Lex]

Well, if they would have thrown in the mouse, I would take 2.

Yikes, that's a 10K system with monitor and mouse, haha.

Lex

[Andrew Pratt]

Bing without at least a network card or a modem you can't connect to the TTP with it so IMO no you should look for a more powerful machine...you know like a wrist watch for example

[SiliGoose]

Geez...that's the year I graduated from high school. Now I feel old.




-Sili

[ThomasW]

I refuse to comment on how much my first 8088 based system cost in 1984.........




theAudioWorx
Klone-Audio

[Lex]

Well, my first system was a Panasonic FX-600, 8086-2 (predicessor to 80286), dual floppy system with a monochrome monitor, and dot matrix printer. I sold the dot matrix printer, like a year or two ago for probably more than the whole computer would bring, 75 bucks. The computer is sitting under my workbench in the garage. What do you do with something like that? LOL. Cost? 1400 bucks.

Lex

[Kevin P]

Amazing. My first PC was a Tandy 1000 with a 4.77 MHz 8088 processor, 2 floppy drives (no hard drive, that came later!), CGA color monitor, and 128K RAM (I upgraded it to 256). The base unit cost $1000, plus my upgrades (RAM and 2nd floppy) added another $400 or so to the initial purchase cost.

Eventually I got the thing up to 640K RAM and a 20 megabyte hard drive (cost me $800!) This was back in 1986. I even replaced the 8088 chip with a NEC V20 (compatible but about 10-20% faster).

Now my laptop, which I spent less on total than the Tandy is probably 400 times faster, has 400 times the memory, and over 1500 times the hard drive space! If only cars could be as advanced as computers are...

KJP




Official Computer Geek and Techno-Wiz Guru of HTGuide - Visit Tower of Power
My HT Site

[Andrew Pratt]

My first PC was a Tandy Colour Computer 3 (CoCo3)...had no floppy drives, no hard drive, no monitor (used TV) and stored data on a cassette tape I remember spending hours typing in Basic programs only to get syntax errors and end up giving up on them...

[Bing Fung]

Those are great systems you guys had :B

My first PC was a 486 DX2 50Mhz with 4mb RAM and a 1Mb video card. 251 mb Hd, with a 3.5 & 5.25 floppy. 15" Magtronics monitor, keyboard & mouse.

No CD-Rom, sound card...etc

$3000 CDN.


Just for yucks, I priced out what the Tandy's type of cash could buy you today on the custom build market. Well actually I ended up spending slightly more, however this is what $11K will get you :B You can build a simular system yourself for a lot cheaper, however I wanted a no holds barred comparision of boxed systems.


-Custom Voodoo Alum case with lighting kit and glass doors, smoked front.
-Custom Enermax SE 450W PS
-Microstar K7T266 Pro2-RU DDR USB 2.0 Mb
-Athlon XP-2000 (16.67 Mhz)
-1GB 2100 DDR Crucial RAM
-ASUS Turbo 52x CD Reader
-Pioneer DVD-RW/DVD reader/ CD-RW Combo burner
-Promise ATA 100 RAID Controller
-2 x 80 Gb Western Digital 800BB HD's
-Hercules 3D Prophet III Ti500 Video Card
-Samsung 21" Sync master Digital flat panel

-Creative Labs Audigy Platinum Sound Card
-Klipsh Promedia 500Watt THX 5.1 Speakers

-Dlink 538 10/100 Network card
-Windows XP Professional OS
-Logitech Freedom Cordless Mouse and Keyboard

-Voodoo Computers Lanbag & Gear grip with 25' ethernet cable


Plus the standard items

Voodoo F-Class Limited Edition Personal Computer
Voodoo LIFETIME Upgrade & Restoration Insurance
Virtual Onsite Desktop Support - 3 Years
Voodoo Owners Manual & System Setup Poster
Voodoo Disaster Recovery Set (VDRS)
Voodoo 1.44 Megabyte Floppy Disk Drive
Voodoo Attack-Pad Mousing Surface
Voodoo Performance and Stability Re-Engineering
Voodoo Absolute Satisfaction Guarantee
Voodoo Renowned Cabling System (Picasso)
Voodoo Designer Documentation Binder
VoodooPC "Powerful Personal Computers" Tee-Shirt
IS09001:2000 Quality Control Standards
Arctic Silver II Thermal Cooling Compound
Cooler Master Aggressive Alloys AMD Active Heatsink

A cool $10,290 US. Close to what that system was in 89 with out monitor and mouse, and most likely no OS

The Samsung 21" flatpanel is $5k alone. You can upgrade that to a 24" for $6.6K.

Mind you in 10 years from now we'll be laughing at this PC.




Bing

[JonMarsh]

What's even sillier is how close you can come to that $10K PC for a lot less-

That's the MOBO in my current desktop and another system I just built for a friend.

Add in 1 GB of DDR ram for a little under $300.

Now, locally, at Frys this week you can get 60GB IBM drives for $108. Buy an extra one, and put it in an outboard Firewire box for offline and shared data storage with the Sonly Laptop you just bought at CostCo.

The ATC Coolermaster 201 (my HTPC case) is about $200 at Central Computer, and a 430W Enermax to go with it will set you back $110, though I'd probably go with a PC Power and Cooling Silencer 400 for $169. (ummmm, a little rich, huh?)

I really like the MB tray in the ATC 201



Slap in a decent video card like the Leadtek Geforce 3 Ti 200, and you'll only be out about $199, while having power to spare to run most current and coming games.

I've gotten hooked on "cheap" flat panel displays, so let's slap on an IIyama 4635 18" LCD display, about $850 at Central. If you've got acres of space on your desk, and really like the color accuracy and contrast of CRT's for your DVD playback, then plop down $1900 for a Sony GDM-FW900 true flat 24" 16X10 display- but again, that's going a little too upmarket for this "budget" proposal. But still, we're well under "The Shack" in '89.




Hah! Siligoose, in '89 I'd been out of High School for 20 years!

Best regards,

Jon




Earth First!
_______________________________
We'll screw up the other planets later....

[Bing Fung]

Nice choices Jon. That Sony would be my 1st choice in monitor if I had the cash.

I agree, a person can certainly build a smoking system himself with out monitor for under $2K CDN, however I wanted to explore the Extremes of, what if I had a wallet and needed some place to help me spend it? Line'em up baby! :B

That Samsung monitor is more than half the total

Your right though, a person doesn't have to spend much to get a fast PC, comparitively by todays standards.




Bing

[SiliGoose]

Fun stuff.

In my ultimate PC I'd spend more on the monitor than my car. Check this out: http://www.elumens.com/products/products.html

Hook me up with the VS2 model. You've got to see these things in action. They're amazing.




-Sili

[Andrew Pratt]

cool "monitor" goose!

[Bing Fung]

Now I know I need one of those!




Bing