This whole change-of-year thing got me thinking. What was an average home computer like on the last day of 1999? I have poked around, but the internet seems to be full of ‘now’ and even some ‘soon,’ but lacks a lot of ‘past.’ Either that or I am still too sick to Google properly.
Along those lines, how about a typical computer on the last day of 1989?
As far as 1999 goes, I would say an average PC would have a 300-600 MHz Pentium II (maybe III) CPU, an on-board sound and video card, the video card probably with 8-16 MB of memory. The main memory would be between 64 and 256 MB, IIRC. CD burners were just coming on the market, but not standard in most PCs, but one could easily get one. Windows 98 was the standard OS, of course, though lots of Win 95 PCs were still around.
As for the “typical” home computer in 1989… The 80286 and 386 CPUs had just come out for IBM PCs and “clones”, and the standard OS on them was MS-DOS 3.3. Windows didn’t really exist yet as a usable home product. More than 1MB of RAM was considered “a lot”, and having any kind of hard drive (which were typically 10-20 MB) was for “serious” users (as opposed to having two floppy drives). And 3.5" floppies had just come out, a lot of people were still using two 5.25" drives.
More “typical” in the home would probably be something like a Commodore 64 or Apple IIc that was still in use from earlier in the 80s.
I think you’ll find that any commercial '286 or '386-based computer sold for home use had a hard drive.
Although the original 8086-based IBM PC (1981) had dual floppies and was commonly found in homes for the next few years, the PC XT (1983) and '286-based PC AT came with a hard drive, as did every PC model thereafter. So, by 1989, only real dinosaurs were floppy-only.
1999: Lots of us Macfolk — those of us with machines relatively new at the time at any rate — were using WallStreets and the even newer Lombards if we had laptops, and the big sellers on the desktop were the iMacs (now over a year since first introduction). We were running MacOS 8.6 and 9.0 on them.
1989: The coming of age of the '030 chip, in the heyday of System 6. Those first modular Macs from the previous couple years were nice after 4 years of nothing but standard “toaster” Macs, but it was the '030 chips that made things hum. Wow they felt fast. By the last days of '89, the real power users were holding off, waiting for next year when the “wicked fast” IIfx would be making its debut.
If I’m remembering right, in 1999 I had a 500MHz K6-2 with 32megs of memory, ‘on board’ video (8meg shared) and sound, a CD burner (8x?) and floppy drive. 56k external modem as well although cable internet was readily available. I was running Windows 98.
In 1989, I was using my Commodore 128 with 5.25" floppy disks and an old color television for the monitor.
The descriptions for 1999 sound about right, and I’d add that a 14" monitor at 1024x768 was typical.
I had a 233Mhz Pentium II (not new at the time) with a 56k dial-up connection. Forget the rest of the specs. A smallish monitor. It was running Win95 (and continued to do so for several years afterwards until I went straight to my current XP machine). It had a CD-rom drive with a modest speed, and a
3.5" floppy drive. And I used to surf the net with Netscape, making heavy use of Altavista!
I don’t remember it being a whole lot slower - maybe because it was what I was used to, and I didn’t ask it to do things like streaming video as I do now. The main thing I hated at the time was installing hardware and software the clunky way - I loves me my USB and plug and play.
That would more closely describe the situation in 1985. The 286 came out in 1984 and the 386 around 1987, but the computer I had bought in 1986 was probably fairly typical by 1989. An 8MHz 286 chip, a 20MB hard drive, 2 Meg of memory, DOS 3.1, no sound and a 15" color monitor. A new computer in 1989 would have more likely had a 20MHz 386 chip, maybe 4MB of memory, a 50MB hard drive and a later (but not much more capable) version of DOS. Yes, versions of Windows existed but as far as I was concerned they were garbage. The first usable version of Windows was Win95. And even today, I still do much of my actual work (as opposed to surfing the net and writing to TSD) is based on the command prompt (4NT, although I am waiting to see how good monad is).
I looked at a few computer time-line links but they were mostly OS releases or “big picture” reviews that skipped specific hardware iterations. Here is the most detailed link with specific CPU releases.
Although I was still using my Commodore in 1989, I knew a couple of people who had a Tandy 1000 HX while I was still in high school (graduated in 91). I think it might be fairly typical of a “household” computer for the era in homes where the family wasn’t exactly keeping on the cutting edge and just wanted a ready to go home office computer.
'89 I was still using my Apple IIC, which was then replaced by the Powermac(no clue on the specs, I was ten)
'99 I had the Dell laptop I’d gotten for High school graduation. 333 processor, dialup modem, It ran Windows 98. And it was a wonderful computer, really, until it went out the windshield after I rammed my car into the pole. I’m just lucky the computer didn’t smack me in the head on its way out.
-Lil
I bought three machines within a few months of each other in 1999, one a fairly low end, one middle, and one not exactly bleeding edge, but kind of a higher end machine.
As best as I recall, the specs were these:
The cheaper unit was a Pentium II, 400Mhz, probably a Celeron, 128 meg ram, I think about a 10GB hard drive, sound & video probably on the motherboard, CD-ROM player, Win98 OS.
The middle unit was a Pentium III, 550 Mhz, 128 MB ram, 100Mhz FSB, two 20GB hard drives, CD-R & CD-RW, DVD-ROM, mid-level video card, Zip drive, sound card, Ethernet NIC, speaker system with subwoofer and two satellites, 17” monitor, Win98 OS.
The slightly higher end unit was a Pentium III 675Mhz, 256 MB ram, 133Mhz FSB, two 20 GB hard drives, ATI Radeon video card (I think 32 MB ram) with a TV tuner (never did use the tuner), CD-R drive, CD-RW SCSI interface drive, 200 MB Zip drive, Ethernet NIC, 19” monitor, Win98 OS.
The middle unit was still in service until earlier this year, when the motherboard finally died, although I think I had upgraded the memory, video, and hard drives in the intervening years.
I bought my first computer in 1998. I’m using it right now. Back then it was just about top of the line. Pentuim II 400MHz, 96MB Ram, 10G Hard Drive, CD Rom, 3.5 Floppy Drive, WIN98 OS. I paid $1229.99 for it from TigerDirect.com. No monitor, no printer. I’m now on my 3rd monitor and second printer. I have since upgraded the OS to WIN2000 and added a CD-RW. I leave it running 24 hours a day. Had to replace the RAM twice but other than that it’s been very very good to me.