That Was Then
When you get to my age, looking back at the history of PCs owned, it’s amazing just how much PC specs have advanced over the years. My very first PC was a TRS-80, which loaded programs via tape cassettes. The programs were written in BASIC, a language I eventually mastered, and each was volume-sensitive. So I kept a list of programs, each marked with the optimal volume for loading successfully.
I then moved on through the Commodore series – Commodore 64 and Amiga 500/600 – which, I admit, were used primarily for games. And eventually to my first Windows PC, which was a Dell fitted with a Pentium 4 single-core CPU, a 40 GB HDD, and 256 MB RAM, which I later upgraded to 512 MB.
The PC Spec Revolution
PC specs went through a massive upgrade during 2007- 2008, the likes of which had never been witnessed previously. The start of that PC spec revolution just happened to coincide with Vista’s release (January 2007), and that created a huge problem. Vista was the first operating system to introduce a new visual style known as Windows Aero, and that, along with other visual and GUI enhancements, meant it was far heavier on resources than its predecessors.
The problem being that many users still owned older PCs that struggled to meet Vista’s demands, and these users were reluctant to replace their perfectly working PCs with brand new machines just so they could run the latest Windows operating system. Sound familiar?
I’ve always maintained that Vista was a good operating system, but it was the victim of poor timing. Had Vista been released a year later, I have little doubt it would have been received far more favorably. At the time, I was in a bitter/sweet situation – my old PC died just before Vista was released, so I was forced to fork out for a new PC, and that new PC easily handled Vista’s demands.
This Is Now
Now, my main machine is fitted with an Intel i7-11700, 16 GB RAM, a 500 GB NVMe SSD, a 500 GB Samsung 860 EVO SSD, and a 1 GB HDD (data drive). My, how things have changed.
So, what has been the greatest advancement in PC specs?
We’ve seen DDR (RAM) move from DDR1 through to DDR5, bringing a significant performance boost with each iteration. We’ve seen USB move from USB1 through to USB4, with speeds roughly doubling with each new iteration. We’ve seen CPUs grow from single-core to multi-core/multi-thread beasts. We’ve gone through floppy disks, HDDs, and on to SSDs.
In my humble opinion, it’s a toss-up between the advancements in CPUs and moving from HDDs to SSDs. I do favor the CPU advancements; however, after all, the CPU is the beating heart of the PC.
Your turn, what do you consider to be the greatest advancement in PC specs? Share your thoughts via the comments.
—
Simply, ….. Storage.
No matter what it’s purpose, without somewhere to put stuff whether for a fleeting moment or forever, nothing can be achieved without some type of storage.
Remember, some guys flew to the moon using a computer no bigger in storage volume than today’s smart watches.
I would have to agree with CLISSA. My first Windows computer (Mar 1996 with Windows 95) had a 1 GB hard drive with a 3 1/2″ floppy drive. I now use a 2 TB hard drive for my main drive and I have several 6 TB external drives, a couple of Blu-ray burners, and many 32 GB flash drives for storage.
Thanks Jim
I think there are arguments for and against first and second place but I have to say I tend to fall on the CPU side (or microprocessor as we more commonly called it back in Jim’s and my day) for seeing the greatest advancement. All the work calculating and drawing was originally done by the poor old CPU. Finally someone realised you could offload drawing graphics to a dedicated card and let the CPU sub-contract out a lot of that workload.
Very close second I would put the evolution of the humble floppy up to the latest Gen 5 NVMe drives and finally third place going to the power hungry beasts of 5090 GPUs that we use today (if most of us could only afford them). SO much power drawn that you could almost heat a cup of tea and more than a few GPU power connectors have melted due to poor designs.
I can imagine how future DavesComputerTips readers in 2050 will have a polite chuckle reading about what we think are “top of the line PCs today. Of course that’s assuming aliens don’t land on Earth sometime soon and share us some of their faster-than-light style tech. Finally with current DDR5 memory prices going skyhigh and with no end in sight thanks to Ai slurping every DDR5 module up it can get it’s industry “hands” could we be witnessing the death throes of the Home PC market ? This no “supply and high demand” pricing has already filtered through to pre-built PCs and NVMe drives and probably will soon hit GPU prices as the VRAM will add to the cost of building cardss.
“You will rent your RAM from the Cloud by yearly subscription and you will be happy…” 🙂
Cheers
Reg
Well Jim, this is a loaded topic. I too started with the pocket size TRS-80. Yes to storage and CPU’s, but several points are over looked. We went from dial-up and BBS, to high speed and Internet. Not to overlook the cell phone s with their various o/s. Then there is Windows itself. Though it pushed (imposed) hardware, we are able to do multiple operations simultaneously. Finally, the size of a desktop is getting smaller, lighter, more powerful while consuming very little wattage. Hope others find more, Mindblower!
Hey Jim,
Cassette tapes, floppy drive storage…in school, I wrote simple programs and stored them on rolls of paper with little holes poked in them! Still, I will stray slightly from your PC specs and say the greatest advancement is the PC connection technology to the outside world. Otherwise, there is not much you can do with the PCs no matter how fast they are. My first modem was 300 bits/second! After a few upgrades, was up to 14,400 bits/second. And it tied up the phone line (no cellular back then). Now, connected 24/7 and at speeds that can approach Gigabits/second!
JD
Hi Everyone,
All great choices! It goes to show just how many areas there are in which PC technology has advanced enormously.
Humble beginnings.