A return on my investment
After spending twenty minutes completing some sort of online order form, which promises to make me richer due to a class action lawsuit, I pressed return. Oh, right; seems that we all paid too much for our operating systems, back when, and if I can wait until 2022, someone will send me a cheque: around $45, as a reward for my attention to details. You can use Google to find out when the various iterations of MS-DOS were released; it was a long time ago.
Anyhow. I then set off on a quest, to find out just how much we paid for the hardware that went with all the expensive software. It makes sense; we paid a small fortune for our need to embrace technology. For example, a TRS-80 (found on sale for $3000 in ’82) would require handing over about $7200 in modern times. And my Kaypro? I know that I spent all of my earning from a summer job for that beast. Kids don’t know how spoiled they are, by comparison.
Just to say that computers cost less than before, and do more. We all accept that; our world would never have taken its current direction if we had depended on toasters.
My thumbs are up: in the lawsuit I mentioned earlier, no proof of purchase is required. I might be a packrat, at heart, but the sales slip for a shrink-wrapped copy of Windows 3.0 didn’t make it through the cull. I remember, but only in a relative manner. We paid because we had a need. Faster, better.
