Being retired; painful

wonkywinch said:
A Vodaphone VT1 "mobile" phone was £1,500 in 1985. The latest iPhone 16 is £999.

In 1985, 128GB of computer memory cost over $10 million. Today it's about £12.

I worked out once if I'd spent a month's salary on Microsoft stock when they launched in 1986, I'd be holding about £10m worth now (enough to buy that 128GB memory back then!).
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First mobile I had was about £600 if you looked at the contact price ( it was a Motorola StarTac)
I once decided to upgrade my computer to a 1GB hard drive costing £799 thinking that I would never have to upgrade again...
I bought some shares in Acorn computers, then ARM, then Apple, increasing these when Jobs rejoined and the first iMac launched. I wish I'd invested more heavily when iPhone came out but I did with iPad and made a lot then. In a way those and some cashed in share options I had through work paid for my boat ( they actually paid off most of my mortgage and I spent the money from the sale of the house on the boat and the French house). I still have a fairly large number of AAPL
I've lost on some other tech investments though and never bought MS, Google or Facebook. Mu son and his partner both work in Fintech and there is money to be made there but it is very volatile.
 
ingenious said:
I once decided to upgrade my computer to a 1GB hard drive costing £799 thinking that I would never have to upgrade again...
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I'd had a couple of second hand computers (anyone remember CGA screens?), but when I built my first PC, I got a 200MB HD, and someone asked my why I was getting such a big one, telling me I'd never fill it up.
 
Stemar said:
I'd had a couple of second hand computers (anyone remember CGA screens?), but when I built my first PC, I got a 200MB HD, and someone asked my why I was getting such a big one, telling me I'd never fill it up.
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First PC I ever used, but did not own, had two 5 1/4 floppy drives. Changing to one with a hard drive ( 10MB I think) was a major advance!
 
ingenious said:
First PC I ever used, but did not own, had two 5 1/4 floppy drives. Changing to one with a hard drive ( 10MB I think) was a major advance!
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My first one in 1980s, a Ferranti, also had the two 5 1/4" floppies and IIRC cost £1k+ DIY learning from the manual was hard work and programs available were pretty basic, Word Perfect and Samna come to mind. As for DOS batch commands :(
 
Anyone remember Lotus 123, Wordstar, Visicalc, Fox Pro and Packrat?

The acid test of an IBM PC compatible was whether it could run MS Flight Simulator. I got so hooked on that programme, I switched career from engineer to airline pilot.
 
wonkywinch said:
Anyone remember Lotus 123, Wordstar, Visicalc, Fox Pro and Packrat?

The acid test of an IBM PC compatible was whether it could run MS Flight Simulator. I got so hooked on that programme, I switched career from engineer to airline pilot.
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Supercalc? My first experience of spreadsheets, I was hooked. Lotus123 was a great product, writing complex macros was child’s play. Such a shame it lost to Excel.
 
Research Machines 380z. Wrote my PhD on it. No hard disk.

Edit: cost £2,200 at the time.
 
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GEM43 said:
Supercalc? My first experience of spreadsheets, I was hooked. Lotus123 was a great product, writing complex macros was child’s play. Such a shame it lost to Excel.
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Excel is remarkable for its survivability, being originally for Apple Mac, around since 1983, and still the consumer market dominating spread sheet program. I took a tour around the super yachts in Saint Tropz a few years ago and saw Charles Siminyi’s (the creator of MS Office) yacht. It was quite a spectacular yacht.

Doug Klunder is regarded as the creator of Excel Here's Why the Creator of Microsoft Excel Left a Software Career to Work in Civil Liberties

NORN Yacht • Charles Simonyi $250 Million Superyacht
 
wonkywinch said:
The acid test of an IBM PC compatible was whether it could run MS Flight Simulator. I got so hooked on that programme, I switched career from engineer to airline pilot.
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I think it still is. The current version has real time weather feeds and can also render actual flights into the game. Before I left there were also discussions of using it for air traffic control simulation so you could play the controller. We also discussed with ATCs how to do training with AI for the controllers.
 
Graham376 said:
I'm still using Lotus Smart Suite :)
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The company I worked for back then used 123 for the accounts people and got Lotus Symphony for the plebs which was quite a remarkable little thing considering it was a cut down 123 with word processing and database bits plugged in
 
ingenious said:
First PC I ever used, but did not own, had two 5 1/4 floppy drives. Changing to one with a hard drive ( 10MB I think) was a major advance!
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My first one was the same. The first computer I ever used was an IBM36, which was considered a mid-range computer, but was about 3m long, 1m 20 high and 60cm wide, and had a room to itself. It ran the Toyota France's spare parts system. On my first day there, they proudly showed me the 1MB hard discs and 8" floppy drives it used.

It was probably a little less powerful than my first Pentium
 
lustyd said:
And yet ironically we're still constantly seeing posts here saying corners are being cut, efficiency has gone too far to bring costs down yadda yadda there's no profit in boat building. None of it true, of course, but we are where we are
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Sorry to disagree, corners are being cut to reduce costs (manufacturer and consumer) hence 'no profits.

The quality of the materials used in fit out has declined no longer solid wood - in some cases not even veneered ply! Take a tired old westerly/ moody etc and with time, sandpaper and varnish they can be restored.
Modern boats are built to a price, veneered? Locker edges become 'unstuck like the old iron on contiboard edging of DIY. Look at the interior of a modern ex charter hard used, not looked after by charterer, you will find trim coming off, plastic catches that don't work etc.
So, I feel costs are being cut, albeit to reduce prices to attract customers not for profit.
Boars now are like fast fashion (& other things) not designed to last.
I seem to remember one major European manufacturer saying boats should have a 10 year design life!!! Now think of the depreciation cost, similar to new cars.
 
The first PC I owned was a Sharp MK80K based on a z80 CPU and had a cassette tape deck to load programs from.

I wrote many programs in assembler on that CPU

I then used an ICL main frame to do engineering design calculations and drawings using the local ICL pen plotter.

Later I got hold of a IBM PC at work and I used Lotus 123 for analysis and plotting graphs on a dot matrix printer

When the cost can own and cheap imports from Cina me about I got IBM PC ;s compatible. I used a series of IBMs 286 and 386 PC's lso using assembler for specialized programs for encryption and Bank PIN verification.

I then moved on to using Turbo Pascal for Garage Point of sale and customs Bill of Entry documents for the import of products

I now use a laptop mainly for E Mail and surfing the web having retired from writing programs for money
 
SaltyC said:
Sorry to disagree, corners are being cut to reduce costs (manufacturer and consumer) hence 'no profits.

The quality of the materials used in fit out has declined no longer solid wood - in some cases not even veneered ply! Take a tired old westerly/ moody etc and with time, sandpaper and varnish they can be restored.
Modern boats are built to a price, veneered? Locker edges become 'unstuck like the old iron on contiboard edging of DIY. Look at the interior of a modern ex charter hard used, not looked after by charterer, you will find trim coming off, plastic catches that don't work etc.
So, I feel costs are being cut, albeit to reduce prices to attract customers not for profit.
Boars now are like fast fashion (& other things) not designed to last.
I seem to remember one major European manufacturer saying boats should have a 10 year design life!!! Now think of the depreciation cost, similar to new cars.
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So explain why the purchase price is 2-4x what it was, in real terms.
 
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