1984 gadgets and the cost

[earthman]

Its about the same time I bought my Motorola 4500x brick phone for £1400, still got it

Could you still get that to work on todays current networks/frequencies??

Not that you would want to, well I certainly wouldn't want my first hand held version back in the day due to the weird sensation I got on whatever side of my head I used it.

Thankfully I don't experience that now, not that I make many calls anyhow. Still not 100% convinced that current/future frequencies aren't causing problems.

 

[Country Joe]

My mate had one in his company car...ford Sierra ...was the nice model xr4i or something I think (he worked on the motorways as a project manager)

Brought the phone indoors and we all sat around and marveled at how compact it was.

I have to admit to being a bit like that when they brought out the Motorola "Diamond" (& Sapphire) flip phones.
They suddenly seemed quite small, especially when compared to the old "brick" (or more like, breeze-block!) versions!

All the Best,
CJ

 

[RonA]

It was Arthur C Clarke who said the modern PC was the biggest surprise of his lifetime, in as much as how far they had come in technological terms but also how cheap they had become (this was even before the advent of smart phones and tablets, so it’s moved on much further since he said that)

Anecdotally when IBM were first shown the first CPU chip, they asked how their repairmen were going to get into it to carry out repairs!
RonA

 

[colnerov]

I like to remind myself of Moore's law every now and then. "Moore's Law refers to Moore's perception that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles every two years, though the cost of computers is halved. Moore's Law states that we can expect the speed and capability of our computers to increase every couple of years, and we will pay less for them." Amazing when you think that one of the computers used for the moon landings had less computing power than a modern toaster, 64Kbyte of memory and operating at 0.043MHz. They also cost $3.5 million each and were roughly the size of a car.

Like this you mean?

 

[Stueeee]

Its about the same time I bought my Motorola 4500x brick phone for £1400, still got it

Luxury! (said in a comedy Yorkshire accent) My first mobile phone was this size and shape:

IIRC mine had Motorola branding on it. I had to carry a second chunking great battery -like the one on the side here- as there was only about 45 minutes talk time before the battery was flat. Thankfully, I replaced it with a Motorola "housebrick" phone as soon as they came out. I still have the same phone number on my current Motorola G8 Power smartphone; the battery in this lasts for two to three days without needing to be recharged.

 

[jimbo84]

Could you still get that to work on todays current networks/frequencies??

I think they changed frequencies at some time in the late 90s to cope with increasing demand so like you're old analogue TV they're now useless. (I may well be wrong and I'll happily be corrected)

 

[cheb]

Eeeh, the late 1980s. I was a debt collector in Southampton back then, and one thing you could rely on was that those with a portable phone would answer it. I remember one regular who was a roofer, usually in a bad mood as he had to climb all the way down off the roof to answer his phone. And me on the end of it. It took him over six months to learn if he paid his account on time I didn't phone him.

Sad really, it was a rare treat to be able to grate someone so easily.

 

[dobbslc]

Its about the same time I bought my Motorola 4500x brick phone for £1400, still got it

So @8ob were you a Yuppy once?

 

[fizzy]

Everything is so much cheaper these days.
Apprentices used to only be able to by one tool every few weeks.
I remember my Uncle telling me it took him almost a year to save up for a bicycle.
Our first video recorder was a Sony C7 - back in 1980 it cost around £1000

 

[Nick DV]

So @8ob were you a Yuppy once?

 

[graffian]

First phone a mate had he would call me to tell me he was on the A217 on his way to see me, then phone me to tell me he was in
the town nearby and invariably phone to tell me he had turned in to my road and so on! This was a real pain for me as the phone is
in the house and I would get called in to take the phone call. Another mate was so taken with the phone he got one. I drove back
from a race and one phone was with someone in my car and the other in another car that was following me, they chattering away on
them all the way!
One of them had a phone bill of over 1500 quid.

 

[Pete.]

Luxury! (said in a comedy Yorkshire accent) My first mobile phone was this size and shape:
View attachment 258149

IIRC mine had Motorola branding on it. I had to carry a second chunking great battery -like the one on the side here- as there was only about 45 minutes talk time before the battery was flat. Thankfully, I replaced it with a Motorola "housebrick" phone as soon as they came out. I still have the same phone number on my current Motorola G8 Power smartphone; the battery in this lasts for two to three days without needing to be recharged.

My G7 power will do 4 days easy and go 20 days between charges if I just leave it on standby.

 

[brightspark]

I still have it

View attachment 258141

did u also have a Filofax and srut round at sales holding it out like a dalek

 

[brightspark]

the 1st answerphone I bought was 350 quid had it 4 month and I heard it pop hmm then it didn't work took it back to shop and they said it had been struck by lightning down the line they did replace it so I was lucky

 

[skotl]

Original IBM PC in 1981:

$1,500 at the time, which is the equivalent of $4,500 or £3,800 today (and that was the starting price - the range went from $1,500 to $6,000)

That came with a 12" green screen for that price, so the most comparable device today would be a 14" laptop, yours for £239.99

 

[earthman]

I think they changed frequencies at some time in the late 90s to cope with increasing demand so like you're old analogue TV they're now useless. (I may well be wrong and I'll happily be corrected)

That's my thoughts too,....I know that it's only a scene from a movie, "I can't get any bars" whilst Chuck skis past talking on his brick phone.

 

[mr_splatter]

I think they changed frequencies at some time in the late 90s to cope with increasing demand so like you're old analogue TV they're now useless. (I may well be wrong and I'll happily be corrected)

Yes these are obsolete AMPS system (1G) before they moved to GSM (2G) which does still work

 

[Mick Annick]

I worked for a haulage firm near Basingstoke in the early 80’s, we had what looked like a standard black BT bakelite phone in our vehicles, no dial or keypad, you picked up the handset and pressed a big black button and a very posh lady would answer ‘London radiophone, what number please?’ You gave her the number you wanted and hung up, the phone would then ring once she connected you.

 

[skotl]

I worked for a haulage firm near Basingstoke in the early 80’s, we had what looked like a standard black BT bakelite phone in our vehicles, no dial or keypad, you picked up the handset and pressed a big black button and a very posh lady would answer ‘London radiophone, what number please?’ You gave her the number you wanted and hung up, the phone would then ring once she connected you.

Luxury!
From around 1986 to 1990 I had a motorola pager similar to this:

Mine was more basic - the pic shows one with a numeric display, but mine only had a green LED and a red LED.
It had three different beeps, so one was "office - pull off at nearest service station and call us on the payphone asap", the second was "office - no hurry - call us when you get to the customer", and the third was "wife wants you - call home".

Used to carry a bunch of ten pence pieces to use in payphones...

 

[addjunkie]

Ah the memories of 1984, young and dumb, waste every penny on having fun. Life was so much simpler then I think anyway. how did we manage in the days before the sldi and lidl speacial buys