Last night, while flipping through the channels, I came across one of those "cheap 'n' cheesy" Best Super Bowl Commercials shows that appear this time every year. (Odd that they do; is there some football game on or something?) I spent about four minutes watching it (more than enough when they're reshowing 30 second spots), and two ads caught my eye.
Bill Bixby was flogging TRS-80 computers in 1984, such as the Model 100 for business. Computer (I believe 256K by that point), monitor, keyboard for $2999, which I believe works out to around $4500 in 2004 dollars (assuming a 2% inflation rate for 20 years). My digital camera has ten times the computing power and cost $300. The 256MB flash card in said camera right now cost me ~$45 last year -- about 1000 times the memory for use in a device 1/10th the size.
They also reshowed the EDS cat herding commercial, which, amazingly, is still available online if you have Quicktime.
