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Blast from the Past

Last posted Nov 10, 2013 at 05:31PM EST. Added Nov 10, 2013 at 03:23AM EST
7 posts from 6 users

Get ready to fire up those dial up modems. I just ran across this old PC Mag from 1992 on Google Books thanks to Wired. (can I through in anymore companies in there?) Get a load at those computers they were advertising just 20 years ago at the dawn of the World Wide Web.
<iframe frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="border:0px" src="http://books.google.com/books?id=HERlo0BgpGYC&lpg=PP1&pg=PP1&output=embed" width=500 height=500>

Last edited Nov 10, 2013 at 03:24AM EST

Yeah, I mean I just bought a laptop for $1100 with 12 GB of RAM, 500 GB HD (kinda low since it's not SSD), i7 3.2 max turbo frequency w/ 4physical cores, but 8 since it hyperthreads and a nice 2GB Nvidia GPU. The screen is a cool 17" not full HD, but still HD resolution, and I have a built-in subwoofer in addition to the sound bar. Oh, and lastly I forgot to mention the Blu-ray drive, the HDMI output, dual band wifi, and the usb 3.0 ports. That and home internet is 3 Mbps on average.

This just kinda pwns the laptops listed at $2000 with 20MHz (probably single core) processors, 1 MB of RAM, 40 MB HD, 3.5" floppy drive, 9.75" LCD, a cool VGA controller, parallel and serial port (usb wasn't around until the mid 90s), and a 3 Hour battery (probably lead is my guess on the type although my battery last about the same time honestly).

We've come a long way in 20 years. Many of these specs are more powerful at an order of over 2^10 or 1024 times. They didn't even have an on-board network controller back then. It's just beautiful how advanced and cheaper things are. Sure you can still go out and buy a $3k computer, but it's going to look sexy for probably 4 years and out preform the average machine for at least 6 to 8 years. It'll probably be scary to see where we are in 10 years though.

Spoiler alert though: Windows 8.1 pro offers support for 2 CPUs. Guess where the next step in processing power is coming from guys.

Skeletor-sm

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