Jul 4 2008

NASA, Shmassa

Memoryt

Warning: this is another “old guy reminisces” bit, kinda like this post.

I’ve been using Jill’s iMac lately. Because of this, I thought I’d soup it up a bit and order some extra ram (because we all know you’ve gotta max out the ram when you’re doing heavy duty stuff like cruising web sites and answering email, right?)

Anyway, while researching and ordering the ram, I made the very pleasant discovery that ram is dirt cheap these days, and it reminded me of a ram purchase I made way back in the mid-nineties.

Back then, I had just purchased my first Apple computer, which came standard with a whopping 8 MB of ram. Because I was working with (or more truthfully, trying to learn how to work with) graphics and such, I knew I’d need a little more power. So, to acommodate the power lust I bit the bullet and purchased an additional 16 MB. This skyrocketed my Mac’s total amount of ram to a staggering 24 MBs.

“24 MBs! Man, I probably have more computing power than NASA had when they launched those dudes to the moon!” I remember thinking to myself at the time.

Well, to this day, I’ll remember that purchase, because Fry’s was having a sale on ram and I was able to snag my precious 16 MBs of ram for $500 before tax. A lot of money, but a pretty good deal for the time. The cost breakdown was as follows:

16MB = $500 or
1MB = $31.25

Well, thirteen odd years later, instead of trekking down to the neighborhood Fry’s, I did a quick online search (dealram and resellerratings were helpful), found a merchant, whipped out my credit card, and ordered 4GB or ram for $88.  Cost breakdown is as follows::

4 GB = $88 or
1024 MB (1GB) = $22  or
1 MB = $.023

Isn’t that cool? What was approximately $31 a MB a few years ago is now a little over 2 cents a MB! Boy, how some things change!

4 GBs! Man, I bet I totally have more computing power than NASA had when they launched those dudes to the moon!

Yep, and some (geeky) things never change.

By mike • by Mike, Geeky, Time Capsule • 5 • Tags: , , ,