[PLUG-TALK] 1996 Frys ad
Keith Lofstrom
keithl at kl-ic.com
Sat Jun 26 22:33:09 UTC 2010
While digging through old papers, I found a Frys ad from
the June 28 1996 San Jose Mercury.
Hardware prices:
$ 46.95 8MB 72bin SIMMs
$ 239.00 Maxtor 2.05GB Enhanced IDE Hard drive
$ 679.00 17in super VGA CRT monitor
$ 799.00 5x86 120MHz minitower (w 850MB hard drive)
$1197.00 Laserjet 5 printer with PCL
$2495.00 IBM Aptiva 166MHz minitower (w 2GB hard drive)
$2995.00 Apple Power Mac 7600/604 120MHz, 1.2GB hd
$5499.00 Sharp Pentium 133MHz Laptop, 16MB/1.1GB 12.1in VGA
Software prices:
$ 29.95 Duke Nukem 3D
$ 69.95 Microsoft Windows 95 Upgrade
$ 239.95 Microsoft Office Professional Upgrade
Compare to a current Frys ad. Questions:
1) Which does not have a government-enforced monopoly?
(A) Proprietary Software (B) Hardware
2) Which prices have decreased 2x to 10x in 14 years?
(A) Proprietary Software (B) Hardware
3) Which has increased performance 20x to 500x in 14 years?
(A) Proprietary Software (B) Hardware
Of course, if we include free software, price has remained zero
and performance has increased many-fold. Is there a lesson to
learn here?
Keith
--
Keith Lofstrom keithl at keithl.com Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs
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