Hi,
while looking through very old electronics notes/schematics, I realised that some of the were written on the back of old price lists, so I thought I'd scan one just to remind us what these computers cost back then. The list is from 1989 for QTH Computers in Dublin. The prices are in Punt (Irish pounds).
I have a few other (non-Amstrad) lists if anyone is interested.
Bryce.
Boy those 14" monitor prices...
Quote from: Gryzor on 10:25, 25 January 21
Boy those 14" monitor prices...
I have Commodore, Phillips and Atari price lists too if you'd like to compare.
Bryce.
If you insist...
Commodore.
Bryce.
Thank goodness I was 'stuck' with my 6128 right then, I can feel my eyes well up with those prices even now...
Check out the Phillips PC with 330MB HDD and colour VGA - 12K Punt = €24,000 !! €30,000 if you include the taxes!
Bryce.
And the Atari list. In case you are wondering. I was working for a company (summer job) in 1990 doing schematic work and the boss asked me to go into town and get some quotes on new computers because the company were taking on new engineers.
We were running OrCAD and AutoCAD on these, so they had to be the best available.
Bryce.
Are these Irish pounds/punts? Was that worth similar to Sterling?
Quote from: Bryce on 10:40, 25 January 21
Check out the Phillips PC with 330MB HDD and colour VGA - 12K Punt = €24,000 !! €30,000 if you include the taxes!
Bryce.
Jesus Christ, the 386 had been out for what, three years by then? Four?
I feel a weight pressing down on my chest.
And why did Atari only offer '88s? Where are the PC4 and 5? They looked pretty nice too! Though judging by the copier quality maybe it was for the best :D
And finally, here's the original Commodore PC10/20/30 Brochure. The company ended up buying Commodores. I also bought a PC20HD (with 12in Amber monitor) at the time because the employees were offered the same discount they gave the company.
Quote from: Skunkfish on 11:00, 25 January 21
Are these Irish pounds/punts? Was that worth similar to Sterling?
Yes. The Punt was around 80 pence GBP at the time.
Bryce.
That's a nice leaflet. Commodore were heavily invested in the PC market by then, makes sense...
25% VAT? OMG
I think we had a 15% general VAT back in those days in Spain and a 20% Luxury VAT.
I think it was 13% in Greece. There was a luxury VAT here as well, but I do think computers did not fall in that category (surprisingly!).
Exchange rate Punt : D-Mark was about 1:2.65
I remember how much I liked the 2086 and how impressive VGA was. But VGA in a 8086 wasn't a lot of fun even then, it was just too expensive for a 15 year old. Especially since everybody recommended to go 286 and take mono monitor instead... I didn't think I want LESS colors than before. So I got the brand new Atari STE for half the price.
I was too young when price lists of Amstrad / Schneider were popular; probably I didn't also care too much as my parents paid for my CPC stuff. Of course later I had to pay the stuff myself, that was the era of 286 etc. Maybe thats the reason I nowadays like to have a look at old "Vobis Denkzettel" and other "Escom" price lists. Each time there was a new configuration, of course way better than the previous one ;)
Quote from: AlexM on 21:47, 25 January 21
I was too young when price lists of Amstrad / Schneider were popular; probably I didn't also care too much as my parents paid for my CPC stuff. Of course later I had to pay the stuff myself, that was the era of 286 etc. Maybe thats the reason I nowadays like to have a look at old "Vobis Denkzettel" and other "Escom" price lists. Each time there was a new configuration, of course way better than the previous one ;)
A had a few really old (mid 90's) Atelco katalogues. Depending where you are in Germany, you probably knew Atelco too?
Bryce.
Whoa - the Maplins catalogue comes in at over 800 pages :o
Quote from: ComSoft6128 on 11:01, 26 January 21
Whoa - the Maplins catalogue comes in at over 800 pages :o
Let us know when you've finished scanning it. :D
Bryce.
Har har - funny guy!
The 12th of Never comes to mind - having said that I'll hold onto it for a while just in case anyone wants to pay the postage for it.
Here we didn't have such huge catalogues - I think the first time I saw something of the sort was an Argos catalogue when I was in the UK. However I find them very very fascinating and fantastic to browse through!!
Quote from: ComSoft6128 on 11:09, 26 January 21in case anyone wants to pay the postage for it.
Would probably cost a kidney :D
Hi @Gryzor (https://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=1) - picture fine at this end but rotates 180 degrees when uploaded - any idea why?
Hm, not really familiar with such issues, but exif data seems kinda lacking... if you could upload it somewhere else or email it to me I could possibly find out more. The EXIF orientation line merely states "horizontal" which does not provide enough information to properly rotate it.
[EDIT] on closer examination the image says it must be rotated (Orientation: Rotate 180), but I'm not sure whether this piece of data is in the original or if it was added by the forum software, so if you can send it to me it'd be great :)
The exif data of the jpg file contains orientation information. The viewer on your PC (depending which viewer you use) ignores this, but the forum doesn't...
Bryce.
Quote from: Bryce on 10:43, 26 January 21
A had a few really old (mid 90's) Atelco katalogues. Depending where you are in Germany, you probably knew Atelco too?
Bryce.
I cant remember that name, maybe it wasnt popular in the south of germany where i lived. I remember Vobis, Escom, comtech and later k&m and also pc spezialist.
I have a fair collection of the old UK Personal Computer World magazines. I like them at least as much for the advertising as for the editorial. A lot of the earlier, and more interesting ones are on-line now on Archive.org (https://archive.org/details/personalcomputerworld?tab=collection). (Here's a good one for the true 464 fans: May 1984 (https://archive.org/details/PersonalComputerWorld1984-05). ) Lots of prices to remind you how much chips and particularly RAM cost back in the 80s, and why the Apple II never really took off in the UK. :o
And if you like ads from back in the day as well as the price lists, then there's a lot to see here (https://nosher.net/archives/computers/).
Quote from: revaldinho on 21:40, 26 January 21
I have a fair collection of the old UK Personal Computer World magazines. I like them at least as much for the advertising as for the editorial. A lot of the earlier, and more interesting ones are on-line now on Archive.org (https://archive.org/details/personalcomputerworld?tab=collection). (Here's a good one for the true 464 fans: May 1984 (https://archive.org/details/PersonalComputerWorld1984-05). ) Lots of prices to remind you how much chips and particularly RAM cost back in the 80s, and why the Apple II never really took off in the UK. :o
And if you like ads from back in the day as well as the price lists, then there's a lot to see here (https://nosher.net/archives/computers/).
Christ, the first 124 pages of PCW are 100% adverts! (But there's a nice one for @ZEUSDAZ (https://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=1578) on p.102 :D ).
Thanks for the nosher.net link, never seen that before...
Quote from: Dubliner on 14:10, 25 January 2125% VAT? OMG
I think we had a 15% general VAT back in those days in Spain and a 20% Luxury VAT.
Yeah, It's kind of laughable really. I used to live in Canada and a guy I worked with was telling me how he spotted a dodgy website because as he told me "it had VAT @ 20% and no sales tax in the world was over 10%." I had to explain to him how things worked in the U.K.. His jaw hit the floor. He was incredulous.