# You spent HOW much for that PC???



## Nick (Apr 23, 2002)

*What is the most you have ever spent for a single computer? *

Personally speaking, I paid almost $3,000 for a brand new off-the-shelf Compaq system, including tower, monitor and printer. That was 1994 at a money pit called _Computer City_. Way back then, the pc de jour had a lumbering _80486_ processor with a 500mb HDD and a 14" (13.7 viewable ) CRT monitor. The Pentium was just hitting the shelves but who needed or could afford one of those screamers when Internet access speeds ran 28.8 to 33.6kbs? Today, I could easily could buy or build an awesome gaming machine or 7-8 decent laptops for that much.

In their article, _"What Does A $16,000+ PC Look Like, Anyway?"_, Tom's Hard News reports on a slightly more expensive pc built by Puget Systems that rings up at an incredible $16,000!

*LINK* to story


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## tcusta00 (Dec 31, 2007)

The most I've paid was $1699 for a Compaq P2 (?) laptop about 8 years ago... 900mHz, 256MB RAM, 30GB hard drive... still chugs along today running xUbuntu, though I haven't fired it up in a while. Current laptop (old trusty's replacement) was less than 1/4 the cost and has double the processing power, dual core, 3gb RAM, 160GB Hard drive, etc etc. Amazing.


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## PokerJoker (Apr 12, 2008)

Well, if you want to go back far enough . . .

Over $8000 for a then-new Compaq Deskpro 386 with a whopping 4 MB of RAM and a 70 MB hard drive. (Yes, those are megabytes, not gigabytes.) Monochrome monitor. Ran DOS 3.31. It was hot stuff back then. (1986)

Keith


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## rudeney (May 28, 2007)

I bought an original IBM PC-AT with a retail price of $6K. I didn't pay that much, though, as I worked for a VAR at the time and got their discount. I think my price was around $4.5K. It had a 20MB hard drive, 640K of RAM, and a monochrome monitor.


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## Stuart Sweet (Jun 19, 2006)

In 1992 I bought a 386-powered tower with 19" Black and White laser printer, scanner and mouse. I want to say the hardware cost was about $7,000, much of that was the printer. 

Even today though, the really fast PCs will run you $3,000 and if you want to use Avid or Photoshop, you're down for another $2k easily.


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## brant (Jul 6, 2008)

The most I've ever spent was $1500; that was for parts on the first computer I assembled myself. 

Now I just upgrade a piece at a time. I've had the same tower for 8 years.



When I was a kid back in the late '80's, my parents bought me a Tandy from radio shack for about $3k. I don't know what the old ribbon printer cost. 

I don't really remember the specs, other than it had a 1.44" floppy drive, a hard drive in the low MB range, and windows 3.0. I remember having america online internet and my connection speed was under 10kbps. I want to say the modem baud rate was 9.6kbps; does that sound right?


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## Richard King (Mar 25, 2002)

My first PC was built around a 186 chip (really). Mono monitor, 20M hard drive, floppy, no mouse (couldn't use it back then), MS-Dos of some variety. If I recall correctly, I paid right around $1800 for it. It was custom built for me by some fly by night Minneapolis computer shop that eventually changed their name to OnTrack Data Recovery and started specializing in data recovery from broken hard drives. I even used them for that service one time.

For general purpose software, I bought Framework, made by Aston Tate. It was an integrated program with WP, DB, and Spreadsheet. A nice pre-Windows combo program.


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## wilbur_the_goose (Aug 16, 2006)

How much would a CPM PC have cost?

(If you don't know what CPM is, you're probably under 35 years old)


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## djlong (Jul 8, 2002)

CP-M/80 or /86?


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## bobnielsen (Jun 29, 2006)

I think I spent a little over $2000 for a Compaq DeskPro (8086 with 2 floppy drives and a small monochrome monitor) in 1985 and later poured another few hundred into it to bring the memory up to 640k and add a 30 MB hard drive. It had DOS but some programs wouldn't run on it. My latest purchase was a refurbed HP Pavillion (Athlon X2 5000+, 3 GB, 500 GB HD, no monitor) for $360. All of my other computers were assembled from components.


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## spartanstew (Nov 16, 2005)

wilbur_the_goose said:


> (If you don't know what CPM is, you're probably under 35 years old)


Or not a geek.

I think I've spent about $1500 or so twice on Computers (one Gateway, one Dell) in the last 10 years. And I'm currently in need of a new one.


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## dmspen (Dec 1, 2006)

In 1996 I forked out $3200 for a Pentium 166 (upgraded from a 133), 512 MB ram, whopping 2gb hard drive, and a $400 upgrade to an Hitachi 17" monitor (it was HUGE)! Oh, and let's not forget the 19k modem!


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## BattleZone (Nov 13, 2007)

My main PC, which is a little over a year old, cost about $1800 at the time. Like all my PC's, it's hand-built with components I selected. It was the first time I'd started from scratch in almost 5 years, which is why it cost so much.

Specs:

- Intel E8500
- ASUS P5N-D Mobo
- 4 GB PC800
- 2 x GeForce 8600 GTS in SLI mode
- 500 GB SATA Seagate HD
- Plextor 755SA SATA DVD burner
- High-end aluminum Silverstone case
- 600W premium power supply
- Samsung 24" 1920x1200 monitor
- Logitech wireless keyboard/mouse combo

Today I could build this computer for closer to $1300-1400, but many of the components haven't come down very much. Cases, power supplies, monitors, and keyboard/mouse stuff doesn't drop like CPUs and memory, but they're all important. I don't mind, for example, spending $150 on the case, because it's likely that I'll be using this case for the next 10 years. And the monitor, keyboard, and mouse are my interfaces to the computer and I use the thing 10+ hours a day, so comfort and convenience is worth a little bit of cash. And those, too, will probably be used for 10 years.

At any given time, I usually have 4-5 PCs. As I upgrade my main PC, the replaced parts move down the line, so that the oldest PC is usually 6-7 years old by the time it gets removed from duty.


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## Grentz (Jan 10, 2007)

IIP, I bet that monitor dropped in price a lot.

I paid Over $300 a piece for my 19" LCDs a few years back, equivalent models today go for around $130 and I could get 24" models for the price I paid 

Just the way technology is though, always getting cheaper and better.


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## BattleZone (Nov 13, 2007)

The closest replacement is only about $60 less, and doesn't have a height-adjustable stand line mine does. Of course, I got a really good deal with a rebate when I bought it in the first place. And because it's in the upper end of the size range, it hasn't fallen as fast.

22" widescreens have fallen a lot, and 19" are dirt cheap.

Now there are also 26" and 30" screens. I could make use of a 30" screen, but not only are they expensive, but I'd have to buy a custom mount/stand for it to get it where I'd need it, and that's another big chunk of money that I can't justify at the moment.

I spent a lot of years using a 15" CRT, so it's hard to complain about a 24"! 

Likely, my next upgrade is going to be the quad-core version of my dual-core. When I bought my E8500 ($350 or so at the time), the only quad core close to it was the QX9650 at around $1300! That CPU is still $1100 or so, but they have a non-Extreme version, the Q9650, for only $329 today. There's no way the Extreme adds anywhere close to $800 more performance, but Intel has always kept their top-end processors' prices in the stratosphere. The quad core only runs at 3.0 Ghz, which is slightly slower than the E8500, but it's got twice the number of CPUs. It's like replacing an E8500 with 2 E8400s. Plus, I could easily overclock it a bit, but I doubt I'd need to.


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## BubblePuppy (Nov 3, 2006)

wilbur_the_goose said:


> How much would a CPM PC have cost?
> 
> (If you don't know what CPM is, you're probably under 35 years old)


I can't remember how much I paid for my first computer: a Osborne1. Bundled with Word Star, Personal Pearl, Supercalc, and others that I can not remember.
Oh yea, it was CPM.


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## rudeney (May 28, 2007)

Grentz said:


> IIP, I bet that monitor dropped in price a lot.
> 
> I paid Over $300 a piece for my 19" LCDs a few years back, equivalent models today go for around $130 and I could get 24" models for the price I paid
> 
> Just the way technology is though, always getting cheaper and better.


:lol: I wish that I had just half the money back that I have spent on monitors over the years! I've have at least a dozen over the years. I think the most expensive one was a 21" CRT that was almost $1K. The monitor I have now is a 4:3 19" LCD that I paid $600 for about 8 years ago. I haven't replaced it yet simply because I prefer 4:3 over widescreen for my PC use.



BubblePuppy said:


> I can't remember how much I paid for my first computer: a Osborne1. Bundled with Word Star, Personal Pearl, Supercalc, and others that I can not remember.
> Oh yea, it was CPM.


Oh yeah, Wordstar! CTRL-K all the way!


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## Pepster (Oct 29, 2008)

I think I dropped $1400 on my first PC, a 386 and it had nothing special in it. It's amazing how prices drop as products become more readily available. Remember back in the 70's, the first home VCR's, in beta format & only available at Sears were $999 back in the early\mid 70's?


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## djlong (Jul 8, 2002)

I'm looking at a stack of old "Creative Computing" magazines that I still have...

TRS-80
Exidy Sorceror
Apple II

And how about this cover story "Is there a 16-bit Computer In Your Future?"


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## BattleZone (Nov 13, 2007)

October 1989: my first PC.

- Generic AT mobo w/AMD 386/40 MHz
- 4 MB RAM (4 x 1MB SIMMs)
- 213 MB Maxtor IDE HD w/separate IDE/floppy controller card
- Generic 1MB non-interlaced SVGA card, IDE (!)
- 3.5" floppy
- Cheap minitower, PS, keyboard, mouse.
- Ultra-generic 14" SVGA monitor.

No CD, no sound, no modem, no network, no software. $1400. And people were amazed at how cheap that was at the time. The Maxtor was $400 by itself, and was "so huge" that several people told me I wasted my money buying such a large hard drive, because, after all, there's no way you could ever fill a 200 MB hard drive!


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## Steve Mehs (Mar 21, 2002)

$3,023.24 for my current computer, a HP Pavilion Ultimate from June 2007

Intel Core 2 Quad Processor @ 2.83 GHz, 8GB of RAM, 1TB Harddrive, Blu Ray Burner, DVD ROM Drive, 13 in 1 Card Reader, NVidia GeForce 8800GT, Creative SoundBlaster XtremeGamer, Wireless Keyboard/Mouse, ATSC TV Tuner, 22" Widescreen LCD, Vista Ultimate 64 bit

$2,507.07 for my previous computer, a Compaq Presario from December 2003

Intel Pentium 4 HT Processor @ 3.20 GHz, 2GB of RAM, 250GB harddrive, DVD Burner, DVD ROM Drive, 7 in 1 Card Reader, NVidia GeForce 5600FX, Creative SoundBaster Audigy, Wireless Keyboard/Mouse, 17" LCD, XP Professional 32 bit, now also running Vista Ultimate.


I'm not one to buy cheap electronics and relace them with other cheap electronics, I don't mind going for the best, spending a lot of money and keeping it for years. I'll never buy a computer for under $2000, but preferably I want it in the $2500+ range.


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## dorfd1 (Jul 16, 2008)

Steve Mehs said:


> $3,023.24 for my current computer, a HP Pavilion Ultimate from June 2007
> 
> Intel Core 2 Quad Processor @ 2.83 GHz, 8GB of RAM, 1TB Harddrive, Blu Ray Burner, DVD ROM Drive, 13 in 1 Card Reader, NVidia GeForce 8800GT, Creative SoundBlaster XtremeGamer, Wireless Keyboard/Mouse, ATSC TV Tuner, 22" Widescreen LCD, Vista Ultimate 64 bit
> 
> ...


IF you went for the best you would have a mother board with two quad core porcessors in it.


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## smiddy (Apr 5, 2006)

I spent $5k on an IBM Model 50Z, the Z is for zero wait state, a 286, 30 MB HDD, 4 MB of RAM, and a monitor, VGA. I've since built my own which is a lot less expensive, albeit close in actual dollars (not comparing inflation and all).


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