I've just bought a refurbished Dell XPS 15-9530 laptop, built in 2023, and it has double the memory of the 2019 Asus Zenbook, which I've been using for the past few years.

This new machine comes with 32GB RAM and a 1TB hard drive, which I plan to extend to 64GB RAM. It made me think about my first computer, bought in late 1996 or early 1997.

That first computer was a Windows 95 desktop and it cost me $2500, about the same as what I paid for the Dell this week. It had a 2GB hard drive and 16MB of RAM.

According to the Reserve Bank inflation calculator, $2500 in 1997 is about $5500 today.

The difference in computing power over 30 years is about 50,000% for the hard drive and 200,000% for RAM; thanks Gemini for doing the maths.

The contrast with today is stark. Back then, gaming was simple. I remember playing Chips Challenge and, prior to 1996, Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards.

Connecting to the internet meant using Netscape. It was the main browser. Storage was physical; floppy disks were common, moving from the larger 5-inch discs to the smaller 3-inch ones. Then CD-ROMs arrived, offering much more space.

Finding information online relied on AltaVista and Yahoo as the primary search engines. Everything changed when Google arrived. I remember reserving a short Gmail address for my eldest daughter, born in 1994, which she still uses today.

In my newspaper office in 1999, we used Lotus Notes and it was a complex system.

When the internet became more accessible, I used Dreamweaver to set up the first websites for the Myrtleford Times and the Alpine Observer.

Slow internet speeds

Accessing these early internet tools meant dial-up connections. The noise and the slow speeds were frustrating. It tied up the phone line too.

Remember the internet dropping out when someone picked up the phone?

Publishing software started with Pagemaker. It was a groundbreaking tool for its time. Later, I explored Linux, specifically Mandrake (now Mandriva), around 2001. That brought its own challenges, mainly hardware connection issues that were hard to resolve.

Today, the processing power in a standard laptop is extraordinary. My new Dell XPS, even refurbished, far exceeds anything from those early days. The speed, the memory, the storage – it's all so different.

Now, fast internet speeds and AI tools are changing how we interact with computers again. They help with coding, data analysis, research and creative tasks.

It's a vast leap from simple games and slow dial-up connections.

We've moved from basic digital tools to intelligent assistants in three decades. It's remarkable to think about how far we've come.

I'm looking forward to my new computer arriving next week.

I now do AI "vibe coding" for a hobby and need the extra processing power. We've come a long way in 30 years.