this post was submitted on 22 May 2026
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Gather around kids...RAM used to be much more expensive. We had to lock cases to prevent theft. While prices have shot up, it's still cheap historically.
Yeah, and a 5mb hard drive used to have to be transported by box truck.
Technology doesn't get more expensive as time passes historically. This is due to artificial inflation. Just cause something used to be more expensive, doesn't mean it should become more expensive.
lol, "RAM is cheaper than it would've been 60 years ago" is such an out-of-touch take. Computers 60 years ago also ran code that you could write on a postage stamp. By those metrics you'd need a contemporary supercomputer and an army of technicians to open a Chrome tab. Besides, by your own graph RAM should be getting cheaper, not suddenly quadruple in price. There's no reason for that outside corporate greed.
It's basic supply and demand... If you have customers willing to pay more for your product, you will sell your stock to that person. I think we tend to judge these companies for doing what we would do ourselves.
Lets say you have a lemonade stand and some adult comes along and says he will buy it all for 2 dollars per liter when the normal price is 1 dollar per liter. Are you going to say that he can't buy all the lemonade and sell it for lower price to the kids? Maybe you would, and that makes you a very good person, but a bad businessman.
I feel like it's not fair to use data measured strictly in price per terabyte, I think a better representation to make your point would need to take into account how much total RAM was used by an average person's devices each year, and track that price over time, no? Because the issue is that people are becoming unable to afford to upgrade their devices due to price hikes, and I wouldn't exactly say that's dismissable by the fact that the price of RAM now is less per Terabyte than it was going back over half a century ago.
Well, I absolutely paid $500 for 1 GB of memory back in about 2003 for my XP machine. It was an amazing experience to not constantly page.
I haven't had the same experience until buying a decent gaming card in 2017 or buying a SSD in 2019.
What happens after 2023 then?
This price hike is caused by unwanted technological push this go around. That's the outrage.
I remember my first RAM purchase, got it for a steal, $50 per 1mb 30 pin SIMM. I had 4. MEGABYTES of ram, windows 3.11 screamed!
Then when internet upgraded from 28.8k to 56k dial-up... ooooohhh momma!
My beard is grey, my first modem was a 2400baud. I couldn’t believe the speed when I upgraded to 14.4.
Back in the days of BBS glory. My first intro to the internet was via BBS’s, eventually got online through my mom’s alumni account at the U of M, using slip minuet and the mosaic browser.
My god I’m old.
The difference today is that developers have spent the last few decades completely forgetting how to efficiently utilize memory.
Who gives a flying FUCK brother?
This is the kind of reddit lib dumb shit attitude that bred the complacency of the American public in the first place.
Shame on you, dude.
Lol, Lemmy downvoting this comment 23 times just shows how sensitive the Lemmy crowd is. :)
It wasn't even something offensive and it's the truth too. Unless "gather around kids" is offensive to today's generation...
Im 50, and just like this guy I remember ram being very expensive. That doesn't mean we should be happy to go back to that of course. This pricing hike is 100% caused by data centers creating the infrastructure for dystopia. Nobody is laughing about that.
But still, he is correct.
I'd like to see you run a modern PC with 4MB of ram.
Be for real