TORONTO COMPUTES! magazine circa 1999

[emmzee]

My dad was cleaning his office recently and found an old "TORONTO COMPUTES!" magazine from March 1999. I was flipping through and saw an advertisement from a company called "Smart Machine", here's their top of the line "Viper" desktop PC (bolding is in original):

- ASUS P2B Intel 440BX Pentium-II / III Board
- Pentium III MMX 450MHz (M/450)
- 100 Mhz Bus, 512k Cache, AGP, Virus Protection
- 128MB 125Mhz SDRAM, 1.44k Panasonic Floppy
- Ultra-DMA 33MB/sec E-IDE PCI Controller
- 14.4GB IBM DeskStar GXP U-DMA Hard Drive
- 9ms 7,200 RPM 512Kb Cache 33MB/sec PIO-5
- Mid-Tower ATX Case 250Watt Power Supply
- ASUS V3400 TNT 16MB AGP Video-In / TV Out
- 19" Mitsubishi 0.25mm dp Flat Trinitron Monitor
- PnP N.I. SVGA TCO MRP-II 1600x1200 @ 75Hz
- Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live 256 Value
- ASUS 40x Ultra-Fast E-IDE CD-ROM 6MB/sec
- Cambridge 4Point Sound Speakers w/Subwoofer
- Logitech Internet Keyboard, Logitech Mouse Plus
- USRobotics 56.6k X2 v.90 PnP Fax/Modem/Voice
- Windows98 on CD+ Lotus Smart Suite Complete
Price: $3,995

Competition from a little company called "DELL" ... here's their "XPS 500":

- Pentium III Processor at 500MHz
- 128MB 100MHz Memory
- 512KB Integrated L2 Cache
- 17.2GB Ultra ATA Hard Drive
- 19" P990 Trinitron Monitor
- STB nVidia TNT 16MB 3D AGP Graphics Card
- 4.8X DVD-ROM Drive and Decoder Card
- Turtle Beach Montego II A3D 320V Sound
- Altec Lansing ADA-880 Dolby Digital Speakers w/Subwoofer
- 3Com USRobotics V.90 PCI WinModem
- Microsoft Windows 98
- MS Office 97 Small Business Edition w/Bookshelf with FREE Office 2000 Upgrade
Price: $4,359

Bonus: An article titled "Y2K Concerns May be Grave Indeed" To be fair, in the same magazine there's another article called "Understanding the Real Y2K Problem" which notes that "contrary to many of the media stories, it's not the end of the world."

[Dogbreath]

I still can't get over how expensive PCs were back then. Nowadays you have to buy a Mac if you want to get suckered into paying that much. (I'm typing this on a Dell laptop that is 4 times as powerful as the Dell model listed, which I bought for $700 in 2007)

[dosraider]

- ASUS P2B Intel 440BX Pentium-II / III Board
.........................
Price: $3,995

- Pentium III Processor at 500MHz
................................
Price: $4,359

Those were the days ...

Here a high end PC tower (no screen/keyb/mouse ...) is approx 600-700€ nowadays.
If you shop around and buy the parts separately, build it yourself, you can get a really powerful PC tower for some 500-600€.
And if you're smart enough, buy the parts in group with some friends and you can get a 5-10% discount on top.



Damn, even a 8086 was costlier when they were top notch PCs.

I like the modern times, cheap high end PC stuffies.

[carbontwelve]

i remember getting my first real computer back in 1998 it was a Pentium something or other 400Mhz with 64MB of ram but thanks to buying it through a friends comapany we got it very cheap as it was a home build. I think the monitor keyboard and mouse was free from dads work. Before then I had my old toshiba laptop to keep me busy

going from dos to windows 98 was a huge leap back then...