Memories... and Hard-Disk Space and Processor Speed
The first computer I ever programmed was like this one:
InfoDog, MB-F Newsletter, October 1992: a Digital Equipment Corporation PDP 1170. It came complete with 128K of memory, 100 megabytes of disk, [15 MHz].... All this great hardware cost a mere $200,000.
Due to the fact that my laptop hard disk started screaming like a Bain Sidhe last week, I now have a $2,000 MacBookPro:
2G of memory, 92GB of hard disk, running at 2 GHz.
How many more computrons? What's the proper formula? A guess: 100 x 30 x 130 = 400,000 times as many computrons in this laptop as in the PDP 1170.... 40,000,000 times as many computrons per dollar.
The only thing as mind-blowing as the increase in computer power and decrease in computer cost is the decrease in the rate of utilization of computer-power...
