I’ve been keeping track of the various characteristics of personal computers I’ve owned during the past 32 years, and here’s a table comparing those data points.
| Year | CPU | CPU Clock | RAM | Main Hard Disk | Original OS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1992 | 80386 SX | 16 MHz | 2 MB (4 in 1993) | 128 MB | MS-DOS 5.0 |
| 1994 | 80486 DX2 | 50 MHz | 8 MB (16 in 1995) | 512 MB (1 GB in 1995) | Windows 3.1 and OS/2 |
| 1997 | Pentium | 133 MHz | 32 MB | 1.3 GB | Windows 95 |
| 1998 | Pentium | 250 MHz | 64 MB (128 in 1999) | 10 GB | Windows 95 |
| 2000 | Pentium II | 500 MHz | 256 MB | 25 GB | Windows 2000 |
| 2000 | Pentium II | 600 MHz | 512 MB | 50 GB | Windows 2000 |
| 2002 | Pentium III | 700 MHz | 1 GB | 128 GB | Windows XP |
| 2002 | PowerPC 750cx (G3) | 600 MHz | 256 MB | 20 GB | Mac OS X “Jaguar” and Ubuntu 5.10 (“Breezy Badger”) |
| 2003 | PowerPC 970 (G5) | 2 GHz | 2 GB | 233 GB | Mac OS X “Panther” |
| 2008 | Core Duo 2.5 GHz | 2.5 GHz | 4 GB | 256 GB | Mac OS X “Leopard” |
| 2012 | 3rd Gen Core i7 | 2.9 GHz | 8 GB | 512 GB | Mac OS X “Mountain Lion” |
| 2016 | 6th Gen Core i7 | 3.3 GHz | 16 GB | 1 TB | Mac OS X “Sierra” and Ubuntu 16.10 (“Yakkety Yak”) |
| 2018 | 8th Gen Core i7 | 4.6 GHz | 32 GB | 1.5 TB | Ubuntu 18.04 (“Bionic Beaver”) |
| 2022 | 12th Gen Core i7 | 4.9 GHz | 32 GB | 1 TB | Ubuntu 22.04 (“Jammy Jellyfish”) and Fedora 38 |
| 2024 | 13th Gen Core i7 | 5.4 GHz | 64 GB | 1 TB | Fedora 40 |
As you can see, the Intel architecture has simply stagnated during the past 12 years in small iterations of the same idea, which is a consequence of the sad state of the company.
Also, starting in 2002, the CPU clock speeds have plateaued: “The Free Lunch is Over”, indeed:
The change happened slowly at first, and then all of a sudden. Consumers started noticing that the “MHz” and “GHz” of the CPUs in their newer personal computers stopped growing around 2000. To give you an idea, the first PC I bought in 1992 featured a 16 MHz 80386 CPU; in 2004, my new Power Mac G5 had a whooping 2.7 GHz PowerPC G5 chip inside. That means, an increase of 167 times in 12 years.
Fast-forward 20 years later, and I am writing this article on a Lenovo ThinkPad Carbon X1 with a 16-core 12th Gen Intel Core i7-1270P clocking at 4.8 GHz when in good mood, but usually hovering around 3.5, or maybe even a bit less. That is an increase of 1.8 times, at best… in 20 years.
What has steadily grown, and continues to grow, is the amount of RAM. Back in the 1990s, you could add more RAM to your existing computer, and give it a few more years of use. These days, with on-board RAM and more and more compact notebooks, that’s usually no longer possible.
Finally, I have to add that I still have (and regularly use) the 4 last entries in the table above. Despite Apple’s whims, I am still able to run a lot of very useful software, and very comfortably, using that shitty 2016 MacBook Pro with that fucking Touch Bar.
In general, I predict that my jump to the ARM architecture will happen soon. And no, it won’t be on a Mac with Apple Silicon. This is a major trend in the industry right now: Intel and AMD know it and they’re worried.
Networking
Let’s take a look at some historical Internet connection speeds from home, just for the sake of comparison.
- In 1995, I connected for the first time from home to the Internet, using my fixed home phone line, with a 28 kbps modem (that’s “Kilobits per second”, kids).
- In 1998, my employer gave me a USRobotics 57 kbps modem, to connect to the Internet (and work from home!) over a standard phone line.
- In 2003, with my first ADSL line, I remember downloading the Mac OS X “Panther” developer tools, about ~300 MB of data, and it took me 3 hours, at a rate of 36 seconds/MB (that’s 28 KB per second!)
- In 2024, I can download stuff from home with a speed of 63 MB per second. Roughly ~2300 times faster than 22 years ago.