Old Radioshack Computer Ads

2

Little did Bill know then how much money could be made selling his software. Click on the ad for a larger image then marvel at the wonderful looking screen of the first Windows 🙂

“We’re proud of our work. So when we want to show someone how great MS-Windows really is, we give them a demonstration. On the Tandy 2000.”

Interesting how pricing hasn’t changed much in the personal computer industry. Processing power, memory and storage is a different story. I get a kick out of the system names, “Sweet 16″ and “Breakthru”. I find it amazing how much could be done with so little back then.

“TRS-80 “Breakthru”
* TRS-80 microcomputer
* 12″ video display
* Professional keyboard
* Power supply
* Cassette tape recorder
* 4K RAM, Level-I Basic
* 232-page manual
* 2 game cassettes”

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2 Comments


  1. Prices have come down, somewhat, too, thank goodness.

    When the TRS-80 Model I ad was published, you could get 170KB disk drives for about US$1100. This was a lot of storage, but you could also get the 5MB or 10MB hard drives for about US$3000-5000 at the same time, if you really needed a lot of storage.

    Not counting the more effective buying power of 1980’s dollars, that same $1100 will buy you about 4TB of storage (Sep, 2006, 10x400GB SATA). I make the point that this is, proportionally, far more storage than is needed by most people, and thus, the proportional price for “reasonable” amounts of storage has dropped.

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