Toshiba Satellite T110 notebook 
RRP: $999.00
RRP: $999.00
1988 vs. 2008: A tech retrospective
Think the iPhone is pricey? The cool cell phone of 1988 cost $4382 in today's dollars. A 150MB hard drive? $8755. Take a trip with us down memory lane, and you'll never whine about the price of a gadget again.
Big-Screen TVs
1988: Mitsubishi Diamond Vision II 3503
•Price: $3000 ($5258 adjusted for inflation)
•Size: 35 inches
•Resolution: 480 lines, interlaced
•Format: NTSC
•Display technology: CRT
2008: Panasonic TH-50PZ77U HDTV
•Price: $2300
•Size: 50 inches
•Resolution: 1080 lines, progressive scan
•Format: ATSC
•Display technology: plasma
When Mitsubishi shipped its 35-inch Diamond Vision television in 1985, it was the world's biggest cathode-ray tube TV. By 1988, popular electronics columnist Harry Somerfield said that the company's model 3503 offered "probably the best big picture available anywhere, at any price."
The phrase "at any price" was apt, since (in 2008 dollars) the 3503 cost $5258. The smooth image quality and excellent color of analog CRTs still beats what plasma and LCD sets can produce, but tubes have some practical limitations: A 35-inch CRT weighs about 200 pounds, and it's about 2 feet deep. The demand for ever-larger screens has prompted a switch to flat-panel TVs. One of today's top models is the 50-inch Panasonic TH-50PZ77U, a plasma-screen television that has garnered a slew of awards.
Sharp predicts that by 2015 the average TV screen size will have increased to 60 inches. Organic light-emitting diodes, the next big thing in display technology, will offer breathtaking image quality. The 60-inch screens of the future may be OLED-based, but the technology still has some maturing to do: The OLED screen on Sony's new $2300 XEL-1 measures just 11 inches.
References
- 15 percent of U.S. households
- other home systems were popular as well
- Tandy 1000 TL
- Bookshelf
- HP Pavilion Elite m9100z
- The Next 25 Years in Tech
- fold-up screens
- 1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11
- yottabyte and gibibyte
- Canon Pixma iP3500
- "fabbers"
- CompuServe
- Motorola DynaTAC 8000X
- and drug dealers
- Google's Android initiative
- 35-inch Diamond Vision television in 1985
- 50-inch Panasonic TH-50PZ77U
- the average TV screen size will have increased to 60 inches
- filmlike analog quality to the sometimes blocky and banded DVD format
- Pioneer still makes combination Laserdisc/DVD players
- at least until Super Hi-Vision comes along
- rhapsodized about the wondrous Sony D-10 in 1987
- the iPod Touch
- declined from what it was in the Discman
- EOS 650 was the first in Canon's EOS line
- lives on in the EOS Digital Rebel XTi
- Now that parity has been achieved
- knocked the bottom out of the film market
- full-frame image sensors
- Nintendo NES was a great value
- Nintendo Wii
- its advanced Cell
- The Legend of Zelda
- Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
More about Atari, Somerfield, Diodes, AT&T Wireless, Legend, Sharp, Control Devices, DPI, AMD, Hayes, Playstation, Compuserve, Gateway, Starbucks, Wikipedia, Intel, APT, Amiga, AOL, McDonald's, Compaq, Sonic, EPSON, Epson, Panasonic, HP, Display Technology, Personal Broadband, Laser, AT&T, AT&T, ACT, Canon, Tandy, Nintendo, Motion, Bill, Mitsubishi, Microsoft, Speed, Sabre, Google, Verizon, VIA, Motorola, Toshiba, Pioneer, Lenovo, Seagate, Sony, Apple, Hewlett-Packard
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