Roll back the year to 2000

[Caracus2k]

Interesting times. You got so much more for your money back then.

I'm not so sure thats necessarily always true outside of computer enthusiasts. Remember that these sort of PC's (like the one in the advert) were often aimed more as 'family' PC's for more general use.

My first computer was a Escom computer (remember them?)

They sold me what was claimed to be a Pentium 100 based PC (which I later found was actually only a P90) and it cost well over a £1,000 at the time (late 1990's i beleive)

Problem was you could not really buy a much cheaper PC at all (new) at the time like you can now.

Even a basic PC in the 1990's cost big £££'s.

Now a few hundred pounds buys you a complete basic PC and a couple of hundred pounds buys you a basic laptop when twenty years ago you would not often get that much change out of a thousand pounds for any new laptop.

What has changed it that the price of top end hardware has massively increased. Top end GPU's used to be more like £200-£300 with the Voodoo 2 launching at $249 (i know you also needed a 2d card to go with it) and the TNT2 ultra for $299.

Basic/ general computing has become far more of a cheap commodity now. With far more options available for consumers (including much more expensive ones at the top)

 

[DanTheMan]

lmao that wouldn't have been Legend of Mir would it? I vividly remember them aggressively pushing that game in a lot of their programming around that time!

My first PC was a Slot A P3 500Mhz heap from Tiny around 1999. I later got swindled over some utterly terrible SiS PCI graphics card that was barely better than the onboard graphics. By the time I'd learned a little about computers and understood how to min-max your system, I got an Athlon64 3400+ with an nVidia 6800GT, both of which overclocked like the clappers on a DFI LanParty nForce 3 motherboard.

ETA: Legend of Mir was aggressively pushed by Games Network because they operated the game in Europe, according to Wikipedia. That would explain it.

Ha, it was actually The Myth of Soma, the even more niche game network game! Although I also dip into Legend of Mir servers occasionally!

 

[Deleted member 77746]

Still a website for Time UK.

http://www.timeuk.com/


Time is still alive.

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/03553347

Something dodgy about that company, their assets and liabilities where always £1 lol Check companies house.

 

[theone8181]

I reckon it was the first Titan that sold well that caused gpu prices to skyrocket (although without that level I think performance would still be limited to a 2080 level (not ti). I remember my dad buying a PC from debenhams, not sure in those days it was even possible to pay less than a grand. And the days of that message of 'it's now safe to turn off your pc'. I think we also bought one from tiny although poor is the worst that I can call it otherwise it will get filtered.

 

[glenimp617]

I bought a dan PC when intel launched the first Pentium. Mine was from the first revised batch in the UK which didn't have the floating point bug.

It was amazing.

DOS 6.2 and Windows 3.1 for workgroups. I also had Encarta 95 on CD!

 

[el_dazza]

Something dodgy about that company, their assets and liabilities where always £1 lol Check companies house.

This is so weird, I found that video on Tuesday when I was having a nostalgia moment.

We had a Time PC in 1998 and it was dreadful. Ended up getting it sent back and my Dad had a battle to get his deposit back. They ended up sending the cheque twice, winner. Remember having Theme Hospital, FIFA 97, Trivial Pursuit and a few other classics.

 

[ianh]

IIRC in 2000 I had a short-lived Time Computer with an Intel Pentium 3 800mhz in Slot 1 which was an upgrade from an AMD K6-2 450Mhz, which was again an upgrade from a really old SX system which was my first PC (had BBC/Speccy 48k/128k+2 before etc). Time had just "released" their first 1Ghz PC for sale with a refrigeration unit built into the case and I thought of them as leading the way when I bought mine

I think I was mostly playing Unreal Tournament on LAN parties (M-M-M-MONSTER KILL) and Total Air War (F22 flight sim) which still has the best gameplay/campaign I've played in the 20 years since!

 

[Efour]

i built my first PC when i left uni after playing on my housemates and loving it. I was an Amiga boy as a kid and honestly by my late teens was totally uninterested in gaming but Civ2, Dune 2 and Ultima Online forced me to play again....
AMD K6-2 350 and a Voodoo Banshee.

A mate of mine was blown away buy it. Mostly HalfLife and Counterstrike Alphas, and Day of defeat. He ended up buying a Time PC on credit AMD K6-2 500 and i think a voodoo 3? I can barely remember possibly top of the range, but it pwned mine and i was impressed lol. Was ludicrous money financed. Could have bought a decent car for the same price

 

[Deleted member 77746]

I had a time machine for 5 years. Great little thing but way over priced.

 

[Hellsmk2]

Started on an Amstrad cpc464, migrated to the Amiga500 and then 1200, next was a 486 system with a turbo button.

After that I saved up to build a pc, but my dad thought he'd be helpful and went out and spent the money on a Time pc: Amd K6-2... Without dedicated graphics. It was a turd.

The most annoying thing back then was that it was difficult to upgrade a store bought PC because the gimps literally glued the parts in. Bought a voodoo 3 to put in the time turd and had to pick the glue out first.

I can't remember the specs of my first full build, but it was awesome. My favourite pc back then was one with an AMD AXIA Thunderbird. Good lord could they over clock... 1ghz to 1.7 stable with that god awful cooler and fan that sounded like a jet taking off. Good Times!

 

[Narj]

I had a time machine for 5 years. Great little thing but way over priced.

Why didn't you use it to kill Hitler, you monster!

 

[Deleted member 77746]

Why didn't you use it to kill Hitler, you monster!

Hardy Har

 

[Narj]

Hardy Har

That ad is funny to watch but also a bit sad. RIP Leonard Nimoy - one person I'd really have loved to meet

 

[Deleted member 77746]

That ad is funny to watch but also a bit sad. RIP Leonard Nimoy - one person I'd really have loved to meet

Indeed. I had that exact same model in the video clip, reversed PC case with drive at the bottom.

 

[jsmoke]

The days when IDSN(I think I got that right?) was the holy grail. No more chugging along at 4.23kb/s or 4.46kb/s with internet accelerator software.

Anyone remember what the internet accelerator software was called, or who made it?

 

[Theophany]

The days when IDSN(I think I got that right?) was the holy grail. No more chugging along at 4.23kb/s or 4.46kb/s with internet accelerator software.

Anyone remember what the internet accelerator software was called, or who made it?

I remember GetRight, but I think that was a download accelerator that basically just parallelised multiple downloads and split single downloads into multiple parts to prevent you getting timed out by the server/allowed you to download large files over multiple dial up sessions.

Does anybody remember a company called Ti'Ko that used to make PCs?

 

[Dup]

Known people who worked at Time, my Dad included, awful place to work apparently.

Good times though, do miss some of the good old days of computers. They were barely in schools and many of my peers could only dream of having one, yet I used to play F1 and Doom with my Dad on our BNC network. Would love to go back and do that with him again.

 

[Rroff]

What I remember the most about that era was the jumps in tech progress was huge and noticeable for example going from dial-up or even ISDN to ADSL was huge, going from a ~500-600MHz CPU to 800-1000MHz was a big difference in software and multi-tasking and so on.

 

[tom_nieto]

I bought a Gateway PC about then 1999 IIRC - my first fully my own Windows PC - before that I'd bought Acorn machines for myself and we had a family Windows PC.

Spent less than that on it though maybe £1000 - P3 500MHz, TNT2, etc. the only thing I think was less was the HDD I believe it came with a 6.xx GB HDD and I added another 13GB one as an upgrade.

My first desktop was a Gateway2000 machine (in 1999) with almost identical spec. With the TNT2 and 128Mb RAM it was great for Half Life, Diablo 2 and FIFA 99!

The Mesh machine that it got upgraded with in 2001 was a beast in comparison with an AMD XP1800 and a GeForce 3 (Ti200). That got a lot of tinkering with, changing just about everything in the machine to try to overclock and tweak it. GTA 3 was so awesome.

 

[seth1969]

Tiny ripped my eye balls out and wore them as a necklace in 98, but i did days or months of dk2 loved that game.