🚀 go-pugleaf

On Mon, 16 Apr 2018 20:18:49 -0500, Dave Garland
<dave.g...@wizinfo.com> wrote:

>On 4/16/2018 1:42 PM, hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>> On Sunday, April 15, 2018 at 9:24:47 PM UTC-4, Charles Richmond wrote:
>> 
>>>> The price was $90 in 1967 dollars.
>>>> What is ironic is that I believe one can get a tax software
>>>> package today for less than that, and the software will not
>>>> only add up the taxes, but also figure them out.
>> 
>>> Yes, but...  even with the tax software, there is still the cost of the
>>> computer...
>> 
>> Someone said the $90 in 1967 was roughly $600 today.  That is
>> roughly what a computer costs today.
>> 
>> And while an adding machine would find multiple uses around
>> the house, especially for balancing one's checkbook and a few
>> other household chores (and sometimes for kids' homework*),
>> a computer would also have plenty of uses around the home,
>> such as email and word processing. 
>
>But note that email probably incurs a monthly charge for Inet access. 
>Maybe that can be rolled into the cost of your phone (which will 
>probably be far higher than it was in 1967). Or the cost of cable TV 
>(which will certainly be far higher than in 1967). I'll acknowledge 
>that these days, the various softwares can be found for free (whether 
>PD, free, open source, or pirated). For the WP, don't forget to add in 
>the cost of a printer (though if the number of clogged ink cartridges 
>I've seen is any indication, it's rarely used).

Why do you need a printer?  You aren't using the US Postal Service at
some ungodly price a pop to deliver letters that could be better
delivered by email are you?

As for phone being more expensive, that depends on how much you use
it.  I pay about 8 dollars a month for cell service plus 10 bucks a
gigabyte, which takes me a while to work through.

>  If someone is a collector,
>> the computer can be used to index the items within a collection,
>> allowing sorting by different keywords (e.g. date, description,
>> origin, etc.)
>> 
> From the day's of the first HP(?) "home computer" long before PCs 
>appeared, this has been one of the suggested uses. And I'm sure it 
>would work fine for that. But in over 3 decades of providing support, 
>I've yet to see anyone actually do it (for long, anyhow).
>
>Now, I'm not arguing against the computer. I've got a bunch of them, 
>and some are in daily use. While somewhere I have an adding machine, 
>I'm not sure that it still works (I do know the Selectric stopped 
>working).

I don't have an "adding machine" but I do have two calculators (I'm
taking a series of exams in which one is allowed one of two specific
models of calculator, no phone, computer, or other devices).


>