This post covers memory and disk storage. Both have shown a fall in price that would have been unimaginable 30+ years ago. And with the advent of SSDs and memory sticks, the two are now closely intertwined.
Memory
In 1979 I started with a top of the line 32K Commodore PET – £100 more than the 16K version – so that’s £6,400 per MB. 1983 saw a BBC B with 32K, then 1986 a BBC Master with 128K. Then in 1989 I joined the PC world, my first Dell having 1MB.
By 1992 4MB was the new norm; late in the year 4MB cost me just £72 – £18/MB. During this time memory prices fluctuated significantly, 16MB costing me £429 in 1994.
By mid 1996 a 16MB SIMM cost just £85 – just over £5/MB. Then it was 32MB sticks: £100 in August 1997 and £68 six months later – £2/MB, then June 1998 I added a 128MB stick for £99, breaching the £1 barrier. June 2001 saw 256MB for £96, 27p/MB and that was the last memory I bought – since then I’ve bought ready built systems with more than enough memory.
But today? On Googling UK component suppliers and picking the first, I can buy an 8GB stick for £37 – that’s less than 0.5p per MB – or to look at it another way, at 1979 prices 8GB would cost just over £52 million!
Disks
Pre-hard disk, my PET and first BBC used cassette tapes for storage. Adding a floppy disk drive to my second BBC cost around £400. Then for my first PC, I paid extra for a 40MB hard disk instead of the standard 20MB. For the next 20 years I was buying ever bigger hard disks – now I’m nowhere filling the one in front of me.
Some purchases along the way – price per MB in brackets: Mar 92: 130MB/£264 (£2.03); Aug 93: 340MB/£249 (73p); Jun 95: 540MB/£139 (26p); Aug 96: 1GB/£119 (11p); Jun 98: 6.4GB/£129 (2p) and my last separate HD purchase, Sep 01: 40GB/£133 (0.3p).
And now? You can buy a 2TB drive for £54 – that’s next nothing per MB, though SSDs, given their falling price, are now almost universal. 2TB at 1992 prices: about £4.25million!
USB sticks
Disk or memory? You decide. 64GB for £6 – unbelievable to those of us who remember what memory used to cost.