I wrote my first computer program at the University of Waterloo in 1965 at an introductory day for high school students. When I decided that I would have my own computer one day, it seemed unreasonable. But, in 1975, I bought and soldered together a MITS Altair 8800 computer kit with an Intel 8080 processor and 256 bytes of memory.
The tremendous changes in hardware technology have held my attention for many years. Prices have determined if I could buy, what I could buy, and what I should prepare to buy. I have collected data on prices over the years. The million dollar supercomputers of the 1980's are now outperformed by low cost smartphones which run more reliable operating systems, with much superior graphical capabilities.
But, I am getting older and it is difficult to keep up with the details, so I must pass the work of keeping the data updated to the next generation.
For those interested, I recommend downloading the spreadsheet of raw data for updating and analysis.
I hope the data is of use to you.
Price and Performance Changes of Computer Technology with Time:
Memory,
Disk Drives,
Flash Memory and SSDs,
Last updated: 2024 August 12