Found an old invoice from 2002 and the numbers are wild

I was cleaning out my old filing cabinet and found a service invoice from my first shop job. We charged a flat $45 for a full Windows XP reinstall, which included data backup and all drivers. The real shocker was the hardware note: a 40GB IDE hard drive cost the customer $120. I looked it up, and that's about $200 in today's money. For 40 gigs. Now you get a 1TB SSD for less than that. It just hit me how much the value of storage and our basic labor has flipped. Back then, the drive was the big ticket item. Now, the drive is cheap, but the hour of skilled labor to install it is worth more. Makes you think about how we price things now. Anyone else have old paperwork that shows how much the game has changed?

3 comments

3 Comments

robinson.angela7d ago

@nelson.wesley's mp3 player comment hits hard... storage used to be such a luxury.

elliotadams2d ago

My first iPod felt like a gold bar in my pocket. Now I have thousands of songs on my phone without even trying. It's wild how fast that changed.

nelson.wesley7d ago

That $120 for 40 gigs makes my old mp3 player look like a financial crime.