How far have Personal Computers Really Came?

Emphacy

Emphacy

Emphacy

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Back in my day...

I remember having a fairly standard computer, with all the latest tech... You know the single core Pentium 4, with immense Hyper-Threading TECHNO!

Then there was the ATI Radeon 9250 with a massive 128mb of memory.
A fairly high wattage 250W PSU.
256MB of memory, which could easilly run Windows XP!

Last but not least a huge 40GB IDE Hard Drive!
NOW look at where we are now?

Terrabyte SSD's
Quad Core Processors with all kinds of Technology.
We're using on average 4GB of RAM
1000W Power Supplies & Graphics Cards with GDDR5 memory, and all kinds of fancy features.

Really though, where are we going to end up next? It's kind of mind boggling how far we've came, in what... 10years?
 
pah my first proper pc was one of those amstrad 2086 8 hmz beasts!.. 1Mb ram and i dont think it even had a hard drive. :eek:

I think it was an amstrad pc1640. It came as a bundle with games ( Links golf being one of them ) and a horrible white joystick. Im sure some of you will remember the adverts/bundles.
 
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The first REAL upgrade I had was a 333mhz 16mb RAM and on-board graphics PC running Windows 98 and I was gutted because it didn't run the first Sims very well, the characters had immense lag.
 
I had a 486 DX-2 66Mhz as my 1st proper PC

1Mb S3 Diamond Stealth GPU
Western Digital 340Mb Hard Drive
Soundblaster AWE32

Still got the CPU from it somewhere.

It was running MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11 , it also ran Windows 95 as well !

Also i remember it had a 'Turbo' button on it so u can switch the clock speed between 33Mhz and 66Mhz !
 
its funny how so many people never even saw DOS 6.2 windows 3.1

and the upgrade to windows 3.11

installing from a set of something like 30 floppy disks
 
We have come a long way. You 'came' too. I go way way back to mid 70s computers (SBCs) so I really have seen some development.
 
Well, I am 44 :o

My first computer was a Sinclair ZX81, I used it to learn programming and it actually crunched loads of maths for my Mum's Geology Thesis, I saved all the programmes on cassette.

My first actual PC was an 8086, my first game for the PC was the original PGA Golf on a single floppy disc. This was Pre Doom era.

Todays PC's are absurdly powerful in comparison, but I am not sure whether the games are any more immersive now.

My first major games were Doom, Ultima 7 and Ultima 8, all great games, the Ultimas were massive at the time and I still play them occasionally, they pushed the abilities of a 386 to the max.

I think I will get left behind in 10 years time, a lot of the ideas in the computing press don't draw me in any more. I am kind of happy with where we are at.
 
These days people put in the latest PC game DVD and install and play. Back when I first played the first round of PC games you had to insert the CD, then type in the relevant command in a RUN dialogue to get it running!


Oh yeah and I also played Robocop off a freaking TAPE CASSETTE!
 
First computer I used was a Texas Instruments Ti99a my Dad bought around 1982(?)
It had solid state cartridges for most programs and had an add-on speech synthesizer!

Next was a BBC Micro.

After that the first 'PC' was an Amstrad 25Mhz 386 4Mb RAM and 80Mb Hard disk.

Then built/purchased various ones from 486DX onwards.
Current PC is a E8400 @ 3.8Ghz 4Gb 2Tb storage.

What I find most amazing really is that my mobile phone or iPod Touch are more powerful than the early PCs I had, and that things like the internet are now normal everyday technologies.
First go on the internet I wasn't really sure what I was looking at or what it was. That was on Compuserve with a pre 14.4k modem!

Andrew
 
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