Gadget for nothing: how low prices for modern technology will fall?
MP3 player. The first portable MP3 player appeared in March 1998 and was released by the Korean company SaeHan Information Systems. A device called Eiger Labs MPMan F10 had 32 MB of memory. Music lovers, who thought that this volume was not enough, could send the player to the manufacturer and for some 69 dollars get the player already with fabulous 64 MB. This memory was only enough for 12-15 songs. The price of the world’s very first MP3 player was $ 250. Today it is difficult to find a player with similar characteristics, but even the most modern iPod Nano with a 2.5-inch touch screen, only 5.4 mm thick and 16 GB of memory will cost 1,500 hryvnia.
3D printer
How large figures are printed on a printer is still a mystery to many. Nevertheless, the concept of a 3D printer was first introduced in the mid-1990s, although it was still unknown to the general public. This is understandable, because the price of the first Stratasys Dimension 3D printer, released in 2002, was $ 30,000, or an average of UAH 225,000! Today, any designer, an architect, or just a creative person for 4000 hryvnias (the PrintRbot 3D printer from RepRap) can afford such a device.
Smartphone with four cores
You won’t surprise anyone with smart cell phones today, nor with the message about the next core in their processors. The more – the better and, of course, more expensive. That was a year ago when the market launched one of the first smartphones (along with the Samsung Galaxy S III and LG X3) based on a quad-core processor – the HTC One X. In addition to the high-speed engine, the flagship HTC was equipped with a 4.7-inch display, 8 -megapixel camera and worked on the basis of Android 4.0. The price of such smartphones a year ago amounted to an average of 5 thousand hryvnia, and even now it remains at the same level.
Only today, the Highscreen Explosion smartphone with similar characteristics (namely, the Samsung Exynos 4412 Quad processor, even more powerful than the HTC One X) is already on sale. A state employee with a processor from Samsung Galaxy SIII will cost thousands of 3 hryvnia. For this price, the buyer also acquires a 4.7-inch IPS-display with HD-resolution and an 8-megapixel camera (in addition to the 2 MP front). Plus, the Highscreen Explosion is equipped with a 2 500 mAh battery – against 2,100 mAh for the same Samsung Galaxy S III.
Flash drive
The very first USB flash drives (or just flash drives) appeared in 2000. They were invented by employees of the Israeli company M-Systems. The device was called DiskOnKey, in the USA it was sold together with IBM. The first flash drive had 8 MB of memory and cost $ 50.
The capacity of modern USB-drives is much more impressive. For example, DataTraveler HyperX 3.0 flash drive from Kingston Technology is available in 64 GB, 128 GB and 256 GB versions. The average price of the most capacious is 3000 hryvnia. And at CES 2013, Kingston announced the world’s first 1TB USB flash drive. More modest drives of 8 GB (and this is 1000 times the memory size of the very first flash drive!) Cost an average of 60 hryvnia.
HDD
The world’s first hard drive, the IBM 350, was launched in 1956. The amount of memory was 4.4 MB. The cost of such a device is not specified, but it is known that the price of a 10 MB hard drive was 3,398 dollars (in terms of our money, we get more than 20,000 hryvnia). Could you then imagine that the hard drives in the near future will fit in your pocket! Modern external portable hard drives are no larger than a wallet. The most capacious compact hard drive in the world called My Passport was introduced in 2012 by Western Digital. It holds 2 TB of information, weighs 230 grams, and costs an average of 1,500 girvens.
Technology is not in place, as well as their prices. True, they are moving in opposite directions, which is good for us, the consumers. Who knows, perhaps, a ticket to space very soon will be no more than a trip to Egypt?
