To truly see how far we’ve come, let’s turn to the “First Looks” section, or “Hands-on Evaluations of the Newest Shipping Products.” This product review headline caught my attention right away: “Philips CDD 521: CD-ROM Recording Comes to the PC.” The external CD burner is described as “the first economically viable CD-ROM recorder for small-business users.” It shipped with “software, one blank disk, and a SCSI adapter,” and cost only $7,995. That is not a typo. In fact, according to the review, this price “undercuts the first generation of recorders, such as those from Sony and Yamaha, which only a year ago cost $20,000 or more.” A blank disk was “only” $40 and could only be written to once. Moreover, the CDwrite software supplied with the recorder was a DOS program, not a Windows 3.1 one. Such drives can now be had for less than $200 retail.

A few pages on, three of the latest and fastest desktop PCs were reviewed. The top performer was the Compaq Deskpro 66M Model 210 Windows Edition, with – don’t laugh – 8MB of RAM, a 210MB IDE hard drive, a 1.44MB floppy, mouse, DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.1. Oh, yeah, the chip was a “speed-doubled” Pentium 66MHz DX2. All for only $4,399. A 17-inch QVision 170 Super VGA monitor could be had for an additional $1,299, bringing the total system cost to a mere $5,698. Did I mention the motherboard was expandable to 64MB of RAM?

Want a wireless modem for downloading e-mail? They had them way back when, too, in the form of the Ericsson GE Mobile Communications Mobidem, a name which I can only hope they copyrighted. The full system, dubbed the Viking Express Kit, came with an HP 95LX palmtop computer and went for $1,995. Initial subscription cost $99, “followed by an $89 monthly fee that includes 100 50-word messages. Additional messages cost 29 cents each.” Makes you wonder why we haven’t heard from the Mobidem in a while, doesn’t it?

Need a super-duper graphics card to go with that 486 66MHz chip? Number Nine Computer Corp. had one in the form of its #9GxiTC Ecstasy board – for a miserly $2,295. From today’s perspective, you get the idea that a thousand of those dollars went to whoever came up with the name for the product in the first place.

Regular fax/modems (albeit external) were purchasable as well. Practical Peripherals offered a 14.4k model, the PM14400FXMT, that went for $399, this from the April 13, 1993 issue of PC Magazine, which bore the headline, “DOS 6: The Ultimate Upgrade?” Want miniaturization? In the same issue,  the Megahertz PCMCIA Notebook Data/Fax Modem was going for only $599.

Toshiba had a double-speed CD-ROM drive, the TXM-3401, for a list price of $895. External, needless to say. And my favorite word processing program of all time, Ami Pro, had a two-page spread ad in same. But that was in the days before MS and Word steamrolled everything in the market.

Nostalgic about the prices and performance of products a decade ago I am not. But one can’t thumb through decades-old issues of PC Magazine without realizing that the computer landscape has fundamentally changed – for better and worse.

Better because almost everything is cheaper, smaller and faster, at least where hardware and peripherals are concerned. Worse because options, particularly software ones, have been reduced by an almost equal reverse ratio.

It requires no elaborate exercise of the mind to imagine, a decade from now, an issue of PC Magazine in which the only advertisers are Intel, Dell and Microsoft, each touting the others’ incestuous products.

No more AMD, Gateway, Micron, Palm, HP or Compaq. No more Ami Pro, Netscape, RealMedia Player, or QuickTime.

Maybe no more AOL or Apple.

Just Intel, Dell, and Microsoft.
From sea to shining sea.