Blast from the past

Steve Litt runs our local Orlando Linux Users Group and forwarded this gem earlier today.

REQUEST FOR QUOTE ON MULTITECH COMPUTER SYSTEM
>From Steve Litt
To Zev Gobst, Maximum Media
I’d like to purchase the following:
1 Multitech Accel 900 10 mhz computer $1450.00
complete with all MS
DOS disks and
books and all all multitech bundled
software and booklets.
1 640 killobytes RAM on motherboard. N/C
1 Color graphics board. $ 100.00
1 Sun md 3(A) color monitor “tweeked” $ 300.00
for good focus.
1 1.2 meg floppy in A: N/C
1 360 kb floppy in B: 85.00
1 40 megabyte seagate 35 millisecond hard drive C: $ 675.00
1 “Smart one” internal 1200 baud modem. $ 125.00
1 Parallel printer port (centronics) N/C
1 RS232 serial port. $ 45.00

subtotal $2780.00
state tax 6.5% $ 180.70
total $2960.70

Notice the price.. Now also notice that for roughly 1/4 of that price you can get more than an adequate machine to run Windows Vista Ultimate. Yes, it has been a long time since someone spec’ed out a system with a 1.2MB 5 1/4 floppy drive but the way we approach computing these days has changed significantly as well. The hardware is keeping up with software and… well, you can’t argue you get a whole lot more bang for your buck in 2006. Notice there is an extra charge for a serial port!

Nice to have some perspective, isn’t it?