I just found this table, which was an accompaniment to a piece I wrote for a magazine back in 2004. Obviously seven years later the ‘Now’ computer has improved even more, although not that much in raw clock speed.
| Year | 1982 | 2003 | Factor |
| Brand | Dick Smith | Taiwanese bits and piece | |
| Model | System 80 | P4 2.4GHz | |
| Price (2003 $) | $2,250 | $3,000 | |
| Processor | Zilog Z-80 | Pentium IV | |
| Bits | 8 | 32 | 4x |
| Clock speed | 2MHz | 2.4GHz | 1,200x |
| RAM | 16kB | 512MB | 33,000x |
| Non volatile storage | One data drive (audio cassette) | 2 x HDD (120GB) 1 x CD-RW 1 x DVD-ROM 1 x 1.44MB floppy |
|
| Expansion | Proprietary, virtually nil | PCI-bus, USB | |
| Printer support | Nil | Parallel, USB | |
| Display | 12”, monochrome text 80 x 25 characters | 19”, 24 bit colour, 1,600 x 1,200 pixels | |
| Operating system | Cloned Tandy TRS-80 OS | Windows XP | |
| Communication | Nil | 10/100 networking, 56k modem | |
| Audio | Nil | 96kHz/24 bit six channel audio card | |
| Pointing device | Nil | Mouse | |
| Interface | Text only | WIMP |