Earlier quoted context omitted.
What I think is also important to consider is median income and net worth of US citizens at that time. In the early 50s, much pf Europe and Asia was still rebuilding from war, and the US held an effective monopoly on multiple industries. From the data I could find for 1952 in the US, a house was 5 years of income and a new car was half a year's income. For many people in the US today, a new car (post tax dollars) is…
My family were not nearly millionaires when we bought a $1500 equivalent computer in 1982, but this phone costs less than that. And a iPhone X isn't a phone, it's a computer. I agree you do need to be in an upper tier economically to afford one, but only speaking globally. People bought plenty of laptops when they averaged well over $1000. The way phones are financed makes them much more attainable, also. The way peo…
It did seem like a big purchase initially. I used it for 6 years of college. I mainly used it for word processing. It never skipped a beat.
Once every two years, I would need to re-ink the ribbon with ink myself. Just dipped the ribbon into the bottle, and rewind. I was too cheap to buy a new ribbon.
Besides the initial outlay, I spent $2.00 days on ink in six years.
If I had foresight, I never would have thrown away a great computer. I miss the word processor program. I definetly miss that dot matrix printer. (I never told anyone at school about my about my computer. I felt like I was cheating. Not one professor noticed the dot matrix print type.
What people miss about old hardware from the days was everything was built like tanks.
The thought of buying a new computer every two years was unthinkable. In my world, it's still unthinkable.
I really believe we have been duped by the industry--on all levels.