My 'ultimate' spec from 10 years ago...

julianhj

julianhj

julianhj

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Sorting through a bunch of old files I found a PC spec from August 1999 which I really, deeply wanted (but couldn't afford) at a cost of £1800 from Dell:

Intel PIII 600
128Mb RAM
13.6Gb HD
17” Monitor
32Mb Diamond Viper
STB TV tuner
8x DVD w/hardware decoding and TV out.
Sony CD-RW
SB Live 512
56k USR modem
250Mb Zip drive
Win98 v2 + Office 2000 SBE

I'm fully aware of Moore's Law, but it staggers me to think how much things have changed over a decade.
 
Funnily enough I've just pulled out my first ever PC and it has almost identical specs. Im planning on keeping it for as long as possible, Keep on comparing to my current machine.

If things keep on going at the same rate, Buy 2019 We'll have 30gb of ram, 60ghz processors and so on. Shame they won't quite scale that way :D
 
I went around my mates once and he had 10 old PC towers, when I looked inside them I almost fainted half of the sutff I never even seen before in my life
 
My first proper PC spec - a little earlier in 1999:

Intel PIII 500MHz
128Mb RAM
6.4gig HDD
17" Monitor
32Mb Riva TNT2 Pro (or ultra can't remember now)
SB 64 PCI
24x CD-ROM

Added another HDD almost immediatly and upgraded the RAM to 224Mb within a few days - I remember how much more responsive windows was with the extra RAM.

The shell of that PC is now beside my bed as a bedside cabinet lol.
 
my first PC is a 486 66MHz with 4MB memory.........running on DOS and WIndows 3.1 that was in 1995 though....

My first laptop is a P3 500Mhz Dell latitude 1999 (10 years ago!), it ran on Win98 then Win2000, back then was good enough for web browsing :-)...but probably not in today's standards (with Flash & etc)
 
Aslong as its got plenty of RAM prolly wouldn't be too bad - my Eee when running "normal" clocks is downclocked to 650MHz and is a celeron-M along with a gig of RAM it can handle modern web browsing fine.
 
Hardly ultimate with that memory, my P3 450Mhz (which was out before the 600Mhz was even available if I remember correctly) had 192Mb in it.

Still, I cry at the cost of it now :(
 
I've an attic full of old computers and hard drives love messin around on the old pc's see how I can brake them :D
 
julianhj said:
Sorting through a bunch of old files I found a PC spec from August 1999 which I really, deeply wanted (but couldn't afford) at a cost of £1800 from Dell:

Intel PIII 600
128Mb RAM
13.6Gb HD
17” Monitor
32Mb Diamond Viper
STB TV tuner
8x DVD w/hardware decoding and TV out.
Sony CD-RW
SB Live 512
56k USR modem
250Mb Zip drive
Win98 v2 + Office 2000 SBE

I'm fully aware of Moore's Law, but it staggers me to think how much things have changed over a decade.
Click to expand...

Woah, sick machine, bro.
 
my first ever PC had a P1 in it :P with like 1Gb HDD and that computer LIVES! to this very day
 
Our first family pc was from Tempo, Vanilla pc with a 486 SX cpu @ 66mhz.

Purchased a new Gateway PC with P133, can't remember full spec, and them a P3 @ 450mhz, slot 1.
 
My first PC was also in 1999, in March, but it was only mediocre spec. I'll put next to each one if they were bad spec for the time, average spec or goo:

- PII 350 MHz (bad)
- 128 MB of PC133 (average)
- 3.2 GB hard drive (bad)
- 6.4 GB hard drive (average)
- 2x2x6 HP CD-RW (good)
- Soundblaster 16 (average)
- 2MB ATI graphics card (absolutely aweful spec!)
- 17" LG CRT (average)
- Deskjet 695 (average)
- Scanjet 5200 (very good)
- Standard beige keyboard, mouse and desktop speakers
- Windows 95C, Office 97 (I still use that office now!)

I think I paid £1200 for that lot.
 
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