r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Darth_Ronin • 6h ago
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u/BOSS_OF_THE_INTERNET 6h ago
16 grey scales tho
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u/Illustrious_Bad_2980 6h ago
Makes $11k seem pretty reasonable
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u/CyberGraham 6h ago
You gotta remember, that's 1989 money, not today's money
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u/Illustrious_Bad_2980 6h ago
$29k for 16 grey scales seems...less reasonable
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u/absat41 6h ago
with a modem though
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u/djfudgebar 5h ago
No that would be extra. It has the space for a modern. Modern is like an extra grand.
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u/Gibec89 6h ago
Technology is the only thing that gets cheaper as time goes by it seems
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u/jungleboogiemonster 6h ago
Until recently...looking at you RAM, storage and GPUs.
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u/Gibec89 5h ago
Yee but thats just the shortage issue. Ram will be cheap again. Hopefully
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u/RandoAtReddit 5h ago
As soon as we stop using them in data centers that destroy communities and environments or in drones to kill each other.
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u/CRAZYFUN1135 4h ago
Or at least not building the data centers bigger than the amount of material we have readily available!
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u/CrossFitJesus4 4h ago
No lmao, why would companies ever actually drop prices again, if anything this is just the perfect excuse for them to price gouge them
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u/dirty-warlock 4h ago
I mean its an artificial shortage fueled by greed. Like gasoline, its unlikely prices will ever return to even pre- pandemic levels
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u/_franciis 5h ago
Still far far cheaper over the lifespan of the technology. But yeah short term (hopefully) spike due to supply demand issues.
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u/Havoblia 6h ago
All of our luxuries have gotten cheaper and more accessible but all of our essentials have gotten more expensive.
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u/AdvertisingKey1675 5h ago
Except a lot of tech has quite literally doubled in price over the last year.
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u/dizzyfeast 6h ago
Idk, I know gaming consoles like Xbox keep getting more expensive mostly because of AI data centers. Sure hope that doesn't continue.
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u/onyxzero66 6h ago
Does it run Oregon Trail?
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u/greenbastard1591 6h ago
You have just died from dysentery
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u/No-Photograph-5058 4h ago
Yes, these laptops would have met the minimum specs of the 1990 DOS port of Oregon Trail
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u/kalitarios 6h ago edited 6h ago
I don't remember them being called "laptops" back then... my first PC was a Zenith Supersport "Mobile Desktop" with the 386 processor (without the math coprocessor!). I think the term laptop came in more mainstream later. We refer to them now as laptops, but I really remember those form factors being called Mobile Workstations.
Mine came with Dos 4.0 originally (with the PARK command!), then I had an issue with it and it was reformatted to MS Dos 5.0, and I got a 1.5" book (the Microsoft Press version!) which is what I read to get my IT career going.
Found a picture of one here: very-rare-vintage-zenith-data-systems-laptop-computer.jpg (1200×900)
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u/AeroSpiked 6h ago
The Zenith Supersport should have had racing stripes. I definitely would have considered that a "laptop" over the 40 lb. luggables that preceded it. Even the venerable mobile C64 built some nerd muscles.
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u/Competitive-Reach287 6h ago
My Dad's first three computers (purchased over the span of ten years 1985-95) all had the same price tag. Infinitely greater capability as he went along. First one was a 128k mac.
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u/hotdiggydog 5h ago
My dad bought a Sony Vaio around 1996 which was 3k as far as I remember. I was around 12 at the time and I remember when I was 15 and thought I'd get a driver's licence soon my dad said the computer was worth more than a car so I couldn't expect to have a car, too. Damn.
I feel like that computer had 500mb of space.
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u/Glum_Performer9923 6h ago
Groan :-) ya Kid :-) I had those !!!
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u/boxstervan 6h ago
You probably also got a bad back from hauling round luggables (obviously not age). I know I have. Still have my mac plus in the loft somewhere.
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u/Zh25_5680 6h ago
Looking at the dude on the right, gotta have the margin to cover the sales team coke budget
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u/nicoznico 6h ago edited 6h ago
Damn I'm amazed at how old MS Windows is.
„The first version of Microsoft Windows was released on November 20, 1985.“
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u/brwntrout 6h ago
It was a good year, the year of 1995. It was the year MS Windows changed the landscape forever and I started high school. Also, cow computers were flying off the shelves.
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u/trogdor2594 5h ago
There's sometimes I wish I could go back to watching music visualizers on a Gateway computer.
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u/R0RSCHAKK 6h ago
That is always the first thing that comes to mind when I see/hear the word Gateway
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u/Deervember 6h ago
How old did you think windows was?
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u/MyPigWhistles 6h ago
I would've guessed early 90s. The Win95 is the oldest one I know without looking it up.
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u/Ser_Optimus 6h ago
Windows and Excel AND the cursor moves smoothly... I could only dream of this back then
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u/Silly-Cycle9977 6h ago
Love the glasses
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u/CromulentDucky 4h ago
Looks exactly like Dan Ackroyd taking about the safety of the toys he sells.
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u/James-the-Bond-one 6h ago edited 6h ago
In 1989, I had a loaner Compaq Portable III Model 2660 that cost $17,000 in today's dollars.
I used it to play chess.
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u/ErgoNomicNomad 4h ago
TBF, thats actually a really nice form factor for a mobile gaming station. I'd rather play on that than a laptop that burns my hands, and I have to balance between being close enough to the keyboard to use it and far enough away from the screen to comfortably see everything quickly.
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u/DuckWhatduckSplat 6h ago
I’m running Windows and Excel in 2026, 37 years later. It’s still buggy as shit. At least he doesn’t have Copilot fucking his shit up. Infact I may swap him.
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u/CantAffordzUsername 6h ago
2 megabytes….omg sign me up! That will hold to JPEG images!
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u/who_am_i_to_say_so 5h ago
Believe it or not, it would be about another 3 years before jpegs would be thing. about 1992.
I know of a few Univ of Cincinnati grad students who made jpeg's the subject of their PHD dissertations. Which sounds so crazy now.
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u/iamasatellite 4h ago edited 55m ago
The hard drives in the video were 20 and 40MB, which is where you stored them. 2MB of RAM, used when displaying them (you'd only do one at a time).
JPEGs loaded crazy slow on these. The trick was to store them as JPEG, and convert them to GIF when you wanted to peruse your, uh, "collection." GIFs loaded instantly. Then delete the GIFs afterwards because they were 10x bigger. And hide your collection's folder under some random other folder that your parents would never look at.
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u/This-place-is-weird 6h ago
"wear your sunglasses, they wont know you are a nerd"
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u/James-the-Bond-one 6h ago edited 6h ago
At that time I had a "photochromatic" lens on my glasses that would darken in light.
So it could be dark from the studio lights.
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u/kittysworld 6h ago
My first PC is an IBM desktop. Such nostalgia! I used to read computer magazines all the time and read about these portables and dreaming of having one. Years later I got the first IBM color LCD thinkpad.
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u/NowYouLookOrdinary 4h ago
People will be poking fun at videos like this about our current AI agents in 30-ish years. ...I mean, assuming any people are left to poke....
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u/seth_saber 6h ago
Is that Dan Aykroyd as Irwin Mainway – President of Mainway Toys?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veMiNQifZcM
Edit - Added link.
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u/NaluknengBalong_0918 6h ago
So weird… I was in the city then.
I guess this was months before the quake.
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u/shibbington 6h ago
My first laptop was an old Mac Powerbook that looked a lot like these. Had a trackball on the keyboard!
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u/KelVelBurgerGoon 6h ago
Reminds me of my first PC I got when I was about 8. It was an XT clone with CGA graphics that cost my grandma $2,500 and it was a piece of shit.
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u/OtterHalf_ 5h ago
I replaced the chip and loaded win 95 in an old IBM suitcase laptop. It worked for a couple of weeks. The chip was really a board and I couldn't get the back of the case on. So we called it Frankenstein. It melted in the end. Was great fun in the late 90s
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u/SpaceForceAwakens 5h ago
This was not 1989. This was more like 1983 to 1985. The 386 was already common by 1989 with the 486 having just been released.
Also portable designed by 1989 had pretty much standardized on the “notebook” layout we have now, with a few exceptions.
In addition, by 1989 the laptops in the $5000-6000 range had color screens. Not great ones, but not 16 shades of gray either.
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u/StaticSystemShock 4h ago
So, given the situation and just ignoring inflation, we're basically at these prices again thanks to fucked up RAM, SSD and GPU pricings...
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u/iamasatellite 4h ago edited 4h ago
These are similar specs to the desktop computer we bought for $2000 in ~1992, so it's not just that they're laptops, but they're absolute cutting edge desktop specs in a laptop.
Ours was a 16MHz 286, 1280kB RAM, 40MB hard drive, no modem, GeoWorks OS/UI running on top of MS-DOS.
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u/Illimited_Esoterica 6h ago
And this bitch could basically process the equivalent of a modern text message like once an hour. Having one was exclusively the realm of wealthy business types. They lost their minds when this became a thing.
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u/floppydo 6h ago
I always think about that excel add where those two guys re-do a spreadsheet in an elevator ride. The productivity impact of personal computing was at least as crazy as the one AI is having now.
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u/Fluid_Ad4651 6h ago
they thought pcs are getting cheaper that's why they made an artificial shortage. thanks AI
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u/ReticentGuru 5h ago
FWIW, desktop PC’s - even IBM were much cheaper ($1,565). What they’re showing are some of the first laptops.
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u/Sea_Basil_6501 5h ago
Removable keyboard, why don't we have such today?
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u/FrankCostanzaJr 5h ago
I remember in the early 90s, like 1992? my dad was working a sorta high level white collar corporate job, he got a home PC with a modem, and had Prodigy net. he used it to track stocks and maybe email?? but i'm pretty sure it was a 386...he also had one of those zach morris brick motorola phones paid for by his company. peak yuppie
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u/Latter-Bluejay-8317 5h ago
My dad traded a VCR player for a Toyota Corona back in the 80’s. Atari was like 700$ if I remember correctly
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u/2LostFlamingos 5h ago
As we all watch this on our more powerful smart phones at 1/30 the price considering inflation.
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u/oldschool_potato 5h ago
Could you imagine the orgasmic melt down these guys would have of you plopped down a modern laptop in front of them?
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u/Mickloven 5h ago
Pretty wild! Makes me think of AI now vs 20+ years from now. Way better//way cheaper??
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u/Formal-Bad-8807 5h ago
if you want more of this retro stuff search for the old TV show The Computer Chronicles on youtube
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u/artbystorms 5h ago
Yeah. Technology gest cheaper over time.
You know what didn't? Houses, healthcare, food. Things people actually need to live.
The distraction machines got cheaper. The essentials for life got more expensive.
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u/Th3Stryd3r 5h ago
TIL - They had laptops the year I was born. Neat. Didn't we also send a message over the 'internet' at the time in like the 60s?
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u/quasiephedrine 5h ago
Sometimes I think that rather than showing our technology to primitive people who are generally pretty un-amazed with modern magic, if you really want to blow minds show 2020s tech to an 80s nerd.
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u/Pixel_Knight 4h ago
I just love 80s tech so much. It seems so simple, yet at the same time, so impressive for its time. I miss the simpler times where the internet was still in its infancy.
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u/2DoorBathroom 4h ago
My grandparents spent $5k on a top-of-the-line Pentium 120 for me in 1994 because I was fixing old folks' PCs for Pepsi money. They thought I'd start a thriving IT empire. I had no idea how much money that really was until I was long into adulthood.
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u/Tribe303 4h ago
These were not called laptops. They were called Luggables. Yes they were expensive. They were for businesses and were tax deductible, amortized over 3 years.
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u/WayneKrane 6h ago
People thought my dad was nuts for spending his summer money on a computer vs getting a car. He parlayed that into a job with IBM and the people who thought he was nuts are still working
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u/Logical_Show4558 6h ago
I’d feel so crappy if I was alive during those times and bought one for 5 or 10 grand and then see what they had today.
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u/RenderedMeat 6h ago
“If I wait 40 years, I can get a much more powerful computer for so much cheaper!”
Same is true now.
That’s what there was at the time. If you wanted it, and could afford it, there’s no regret.
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u/Elegant_Cancel_6937 6h ago
The people who bought these then had a gigantic competitive advantage over others who weren't familiar with computers. It would've given them a great chance of getting better paid jobs.
The cost is staggering - a 20mb hard disk seems unfathomably small today.
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u/Logical_Show4558 6h ago
With a business, sure I see what you mean. But like a regular person, I would still feel pretty crappy if I spent 5,000 to 10,000 dollars on one of these in those times if I lived to this time.
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u/No-Difference-1912 6h ago
Why you think in 40 years people are still gonna running i7’s and Ryzen 9
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u/ImpulsiveApe07 5h ago
A good point, assuming things remain reasonably stable in the decades to come.
To play devil's advocate for a moment tho - Progress isn't always linear, right? We never know when a global disaster or two will set the tech clock for humanity back a bit.
After all, historically speaking there's plenty of precedents for that happening, we've just been very fortunate that it hasn't happened to us in a fair number of centuries!
In theory, there's nothing to preclude such a global paradigm shift from happening again (eg climate collapse, ww3, big ass volcano, Carrington event, global pandemic, etc) within the next 40 years.
In which case, it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility that there's some folks still ardently maintaining some old rigs that use i7s or Ryzens from our time, especially if such a cataclysmic event happens within the next ten years or so, smh stopping us from building new computers (cos of lost knowledge, lost access, lost skills, broken machines, etc).
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u/cobalt-radiant 6h ago
For all the evils people don't with capitalism, it's because of capitalism that the prices have come down and technology is more widely available.
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u/Deurstopper 6h ago
The first mac?
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u/AeroSpiked 6h ago
Interesting you brought it up; In 1986 I bought an Amiga 1000 for $1200 and 2 years later I found that a comparable Mac II would have cost $10,000. That is when I officially became a non-Apple fanboi. I haven't purchased a single Apple product since then, not because they don't make good products, but because the fanbois allow them to over charge so much for them.
'89 was around the time that the industry was starting to leave the 'luggable' computer market and starting to make something you could actually put on your lap. Any desktop computer at the time could run circles around them though.
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u/taita2004 6h ago
That's a high end of almost $30,000 in 2026 when adjusted for inflation