Topic: The Disposable PC.

[sam]

http://blog.hydrasystemsllc.com/2010/02/16/the-disposable-pc/

I was just having a conversation with a colleague when we had gotten to the topic of the disposable PC.  If you are not familiar with the concept, this post will highlight the details below. When I first dabbled with computers back in the late 80’s, it was an Apple. We didn’t own it. It was available at the local school in the school’s computer lab of no more than 25-30 computers. They were running the Apple IIe and even though they were outdated at the time, they didn’t have the finances to upgrade the systems. By the time the 90’s hit I was already well acquainted with Macintosh line of PCs but again our family didn’t own any. All computers were just too expensive. At around 1995 (maybe a little earlier) our family dropped nearly $2,000 (USD) into a Packard Bell (rated as one of the worst PCs of all time). I am going off of memory but it ran no more than 70 MHz (Intel Pentium) and had no more than 8 or 16 MBytes of EDO RAM. I don’t remember the hard drive space, although I believe it was 2 GBytes supplied from one of the old school big foot drives. The PC came with Windows 3.11 but was soon later upgraded to Windows 95.

[daveeb]

That packard bell seems like an incredibly good spec for 1995 or earlier. I had a 100 mHz pentium 1, 16 MB ram, 1.2 GB hard drive that cost me £1600 from DAN in around 1997-1998. I must have had more money thasn sense back then.

[Rodders]

It doesn't seem that long ago power users were bragging about their massive 128kb of RAM.   

[Rik]

I used to be pleased with 32k, Rod.

[Rodders]

Luxury!  We had to make do wi' a piece of wet string.

[Rik]

That can be very painful as it dries out and shrinks...

[Simon]

I think the article raises a very valid point.

To diagnose a PC, it was $60. We would not have repaired the PC, even if the problem was apparent unless this diagnostics fee was paid in full. This $60 was never applied toward any other repairs either. So if we came back saying that your hard drive went bad and you need to replace it and reinstall the OS, you looked at spending another $120 for a hard drive, $60 to re image Windows followed by another $20 or more to install all Windows Updates and/or any other applications or device drivers. Add another $60 if we were able to salvage data from your old hard drive and transfer it to the new one. At times you were looking to spend over $320 for repairing a PC. This could have been more than half the price of buying a new PC. So why invest into something that is already outdated? And if the service prices have increased since then, then what is the point when you can spend $400 or less and get a netbook with a Linux distribution or Windows 7 pre-installed?

One of my friends, who actually had a PC before I did, in the late 90s, took theirs into a local repair shop, and it ended up costing them over £400 for a new motherboard, and to have Windows 95 restored and reloaded.  These days, they could have bought a new PC for that, and had change.

[chorleydave]

My first PC was a second hand machine I bought in 1995 while I was a mature student at Lancaster Uni.  I bought it from a Malaysian who had just completed his PhD and couldn't (or didn't want to) transport it back home to Malaysia.  It had a 486 processor, running at 66mhz and 4MB Ram - a massive amount, along with a 200MB hard drive - more than enough storage space for an undergraduate student.  It was loaded with Windows for Workgroups 3.11 and Microsoft Works 2.  I paid £250 for it and my peers couldn't believe how little I had paid for my "absolute bargain"!

As an aside, Microsoft Works files were so small in those days that I backed up a whole three years essays and disertation on a single 1.4MB floppy disk!

[sam]

ah how computing has changed. I won't tell you about the 50TB drive we just built at Calgary... and how we are going to have to deal with 1TB of data a second when the SKA is built....

[Rodders]

Wow, that'll handle an absolutely enormous amount of pron!   

[Clive]

Probably full by now Rod.   

[sam]

Wow, that'll handle an absolutely enormous amount of pron!