PC vs amiga pricing in the 80s and 90's. Were PC owners getting screwed?

[runequester]

So throughout the 80s, PC stuff was wicked expensive compared to buying an amiga. This persisted well into the 90s.

On paper, this should not have been the case. THe amiga was a small niche, ala apple, without multiple vendors competing against each other. By all rights, things should have been reversed.

On top of that, especially mid 80's, PC equipment was pretty meek in its capabilities.


I know amiga upgrades were pricey, but is there something I am missing, or was PC owners just being robbed?

[runequester]

And they wanted to keepp the image of them being powerful business systems.  If it costs more its better, right ?
 
Bettamax was a better format than VHS, but because it was also cheaper than VHS people assumed it was not as good.

probably off topic, but in the very late 90's, I worked for a while at a school back home for video production. THey still used loads of betamax for their cameras. Only place I've seen them but i thought it was neat

[runequester]

My current PC was 300 dollars at fry's electronics. 2.something ghz dual core, 4 gigs of RAM, G100 graphics. Not a power house nowadays but it serves just about all my needs, and when shipping costs are factored in, I doubt I'd have saved much doing it part for part.

[runequester]

Our first PC was a piece of shit and cost around 1100 US dollars equivalent in the very late 90's. I remember being disappointed that things didn't look much better than my 1200 and sounded worse.

We've had the AGA discussion before.
I still don't really buy it much really.
Yeah, 256 colour workbench was pokey. For applications, it seemed to work well enough, and you needed an expensive machine to do something comparable to HAM modes.

People point to doom on a cheap 030 and say AGA wasn't strong enough, but they are usually comparing to Doom running on a 486 or pentium. THat has far more impact than AGA vs VGA in my experience.

[runequester]

Thats a good point Khephren.

[runequester]

..still love my A1200 though! (before the knives come out!)

haha, I'll let you off... for now

[runequester]

I have to agree looking back 80's and 90's PC really did seem massively over priced when compared to the home computers like Amiga, Atari. I think one thing people forget is that most PC came with very costly CRT Monitors, and Microsoft Software (windows & office)  where as Amiga you could just use the telly and software was a lot cheaper on the Amiga. But still they where over priced.

I think today it is very different and I have to agree again with the fact that building your own PC vs buy a Supermarket or low brand PC its very hard to beat the price, even with OEM equipment (well at least here in the uk) specially when you add the Microsoft Tax. Plus when you factor in the fact that if anything goes wrong with your tech its pull out the part send it back, and fix all the software problems you self where as if you bought it from a supermarket they just give you a full replacement. But it is still fun to build your own PC and you usually end up with higher quality parts than what would be in them cheap PC.

Cost of software was a big one too. PC software, especially applications seemed to be wicked expensive. I guess thats why people got used to pirating the stuff.

[runequester]

Anyone got some price quotes for C64 software at its height?

For decent games or apps I mean.

[runequester]

VAT is tax.

So you mean it doesn't stand for "vague additions to total" ? :lol:

[runequester]

Great example of a word with several meanings. A vat is also something you soak stuff in, such as a fryer. I think of that everytime we get soaked in taxes. So much for one of the largest reasons our country was founded.  :mad:

Tax evasion because the Brits had to pay for regular soldiers to defend you lot in the French and Indian wars ? :lol:


Joking aside.. maybe this is a bad tangent but I think most people would prefer to pay what they do now, than to pay the taxes they paid in the 40's and 50's.

Its kind of sad actually, because fundamentally:

We want to get stuff (roads, medicine)
We want to kill foreign people
We want to not pay for the above two
We say we're concerned about the deficit.
We also want to make sure corporations don't have to pay a single dollar.


We can't have all 5 from that list.

[runequester]

Being from Oregon, it is tempting to gloat as we have no sales tax..

That is, it's tempting, until I look at my property and income tax....  :madashell:

Such is life..

Besides, what's the point of adding taxes to PCs built out of the country?
It's not like we'll end up not being able to compete and have all of our hardware being built elsewhere..  That would be silly..  :confused:

desiv

You gotta pay your share, so the people paying a chinese dude 20 cents an hour don't have to