Personal Computers: in the 1990’s Presenter: Michael Verhaart Use [PageDown] to proceed or in Full screen mode (right click for menu) use Left click mouse to proceed…

Outline n Research question n Scope of research n Some history n Examples from the 1990’s n Comparison table n Chart showing changes n Conclusions

Research question. n What features in personal computers have changed in the 1990’s ?

Scope n Restricted to PC’s between $2000 and $3000. n Comparing F Hard Drives F CPU Speed F RAM F Features (like CD-ROM)

History n 1981 IBM $8,000 u Mono VDU u 2 x 1.2MB 5.25” floppy u 64KB RAM (0.064MB!) n IBM PC $14,000 u Mono VDU u Storage F 1.2MB 5.25” FDD F 10MB Hard DD u 256K RAM (1/4 MB)

PC n VDU 14” VGA F (640 x 480 x 16 colour) n CPU 16 Mhz n RAM 1MB n Hard Disk u 52MB $2200 u 102MB $2600

n sVDU 14” VGA F (640 x 480 x 256 colour) n CPU 4/100 Mhz n RAM 8MB n Hard Disk u 540MB $2400 u 1GB $2600

Pentium II MMX n sVDU 15” sVGA F (800 x 600 x 16M colour) n CPU Pentium II MMX 300 Mhz n RAM 64MB n Hard Disk u 6.5MB $2800

Raw data

Data Analysis

Conclusions n CPU Speeds, hard disk capacities and RAM, are all increasing exponentially. n With three different things increasing exponentially overall performance will change much more than double each year. n Since software is written to take advantage of new hardware it is likely that your PC purchased this year will need to be replaced within 3 years n (Maybe sooner!!)

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