I just bought a new iMac for my wife. Like my flash drive post, I’ll try to compare what’s in our home today against our first home PC.
I won’t make the same mistakes I did in that post. But I may make different ones.
Our first system was a standard PC with a Nanao 19″ monitor. It ran Windows 95, 98, 98 second edition, Me, and then I replaced it. Our current systems are a 17″ MacBook Pro and a 24″ iMac.
I don’t have our first system to benchmark against, but I do remember some salient hardware specs.
| What | Then | Now | Difference |
| Purchase year | 1996 | 2008 – 2009 | ~12 years |
| Computers | 1 desktop | 1 laptop, 1 desktop | x 2 |
| Total cost | $6,000, + printer | $6,000, + printer | same |
| GHz x # cores | .166 | 10.8 | x 65 |
| Graphics chips | 1 slow poke | 2 speedy chips | x lots |
| RAM | 32MB | 8GB | x 250 |
| RAM speed | Don’t remember | 667MHz, 800MHz | x 6? |
| Disk | 4GB | 506GB int. + 2TB NAS = 2.5TB | x 625 |
| Disk speed | 5400rpm? | 1 5400rpm, 1 7200rpm | x 1.33? (desktop comparison) |
| Local network | 10Mbit | 1000Mbit | x 100 |
| Internet | 54Kbps | 7Mbps down, 896Kbps up | x 130, x17 |
| Screens | 19″ Nanao CRT, 1024 x 768 max useable | 1 17″, 1 24″ plasmas, both 1920 x 1200 | x 5.9 pixels, – volume, – weight |
| Power | 300W, I think | 85W + 280W = 365W | x 1.22 |
| Printer | Dedicated HP DeskJet color inkjet | Networked Samsung ML-2551N b&w laser | – color, + everything else |
For our first system, I don’t recall (and so cannot compare) disk caches, processor caches, motherboard I/O bus performance, graphics processor performance, or system MTBF. It was an ISA bus system, with then-standard serial, parallel, and video connectors out of the case. Today’s system are festooned with USB and FireWire connectors, a DVI connector, and an ExpressCard connector.
Seek Nuance 