My first PC (IBM AT) 1985 - note the prices

I bought my first PC, an IBM AT without the troublesome 20 MB HDD. I used my own 30 MB HDD and got good performance and saved a lot of scratch.

I'm posting a scan of the original purchase receipt, which I found buried in some papers that all got recycled. Look at the prices.

Now I have a homebuilt ASUS ROG X670E Strix-E system, AMD 7900x CPU, and 64 GB RAM. Plus over 20 TB of storage. What a difference.

I bought my first computer in 1979. It was a TRS-80 Model I. I never used a hard drive with it. Only four floppy drives. Over the years I must have spent $7000 ($19039 2022) on it.

I didn't buy my first PC compatible until 1995. It had a Intel 486DX2-66MHz CPU. I paid $1800 ($3457 2022) for it.

Back in those days a person could only afford one PC. Now it is not unusual for a person to have multiple PCs.

Note that PCs progressed rapidly in the early years. I had several PCs between 1995 and 2002 but discarded all of them eventually as I built new ones. The old ones were simply obsolete. I still have have all the computers I bought/built after 2002. The only exception is the laptop I bought in 2004. The video for it failed last year.

For comparison here are the specs for my first and current laptops. Note I paid about the same for both.

HP Pavilion zv5380us (2004)
Cost: $1550
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 2.2GHz (1C/1T)
RAM: 1GB (2x512MB) DDR
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 4 440 Go (64MB RAM)
DSP: 15.4" (1280x800)
DRV: 80GB PATA 2.5" HDD
NET: Ethernet 10/100Mbps; Wifi 802.11g

ASUS TUF Gaming A15 (2022)
Cost: $1495
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 6800H 3.2-4.7GHz (8C/16T)
RAM: 16GB (2x8GB) DDR5
GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 (6GB RAM)
DSP: 15.6" (1920x1080)
DRV: 500GB NVME M.2 SSD
NET: Ethernet 1000Mbps; Wifi 802.11ax

MisterEd said:

I bought my first computer in 1979. It was a TRS-80 Model I. I never used a hard drive with it. Only four floppy drives. Over the years I must have spent $7000 ($19039 2022) on it.

Oh! Taking a trip down memory lane! Or what's left of it!
I didn't buy my first PC compatible until 1995. It had a Intel 486DX2-66MHz CPU. I paid $1800 ($3457 2022) for it.

Back in those days a person could only afford one PC. Now it is not unusual for a person to have multiple PCs.

My first computer was also a TRS-80 Model 1 purchased in 1978 with 4k of ram which I upgraded to 16k. Following that was the expansion unit, floppy disk drive and the 9 pin dot matrix printer. I didn't keep up with the pricing but I know I have well over $3000 invested.

I purchased the Radio Shack Color Computer shortly after.
It was around 1985 when I got my first IBM compatible PC with the Intel 8080 processor. I ran Windows 1 off floppies for a short while until I got my first 30MB hard drive.

Later PC upgrades include the Intel 80186, 80286, 80386, 80486 and the 80586 which started the Pentium naming convention.
I could go on but I'll stop here.

My first calculator/slide rule was an E-6B back in late '50s/early '60s, still have it.

Berton said:

My first calculator/slide rule was an E-6B back in late '50s/early '60s, still have it.

I still have my Abacus from when I was stationed in Londinium. Mind you that pesky Gaul Asterisk tried to steal it a few times.

x509 said:

I bought my first PC, an IBM AT .... I'm posting a scan of the original purchase receipt, which I found buried in some papers that all got recycled. Look at the prices....

MisterEd said:

...I didn't buy my first PC compatible until 1995. It had a Intel 486DX2-66MHz CPU. I paid $1800 ($3457 2022) for it.

I've never bought a new PC.

My first PC was an IBM AT, one that was being disposed of at work. Since then I've built a few, mostly from parts bought at auction. More recently I've been buying laptops from a pawn shop chain called Cash Converters, typically at no more than £200 ($245), often a lot less. My System One below was bought for £200 in 2013 (and still going strong).

But two years ago I got tempted to splash out on my most recent machine, a Dell Latitude 5410 with 32GB RAM, a 500GB SSD and a 10th gen i7. I had a few issues at first, a bios password that no one knew, but as it was entitled to Dell Pro Support until Jan. 2024 a phone call got that fixed - and I got a £50 refund from Cash Converters for my troubles. So all told it cost me £450 ($550).