The 80's

Top Ten reasons the 80s were a cooler
time to be a teenager than the 90s:
10. MTV actually played videos in the 80s.
9. There was only one kind of Nike tennis shoes (White with a red swoosh)
and they didn't cost $125.00.
8. A comb in your back pocket is more practical and less painful than
a ring through your nose.
7. In the 80s, playing video games actually meant going out to DO something.
6. In the 80s, when you were out partying, you didn't have to worry about
your Mom calling you on your cell phone.
5. In the 80s we didn't have to worry about getting our heads blown off at school
unless you put a whole pack of Pop Rocks in your mouth and drank a Coke really fast.
4. Debbie Gibson vs. Britney Spears. New Kids on the Block vs. N'Sync.
New Edition vs. Hanson. Ok, that one's a draw.
3. In the early 80s, there were kids in your high school
who could buy alcohol LEGALLY.
2. Feathered hair was easier to care for than dreadlocks.
And the #1 reason the 80s were a cooler
time to grow up in than the 90s:
1. In the 80s you didn't have to worry about your pants falling down all the time.
They were so tight, we couldn't get them off!

 

WoW the 80's


 

  1. You've ever ended a sentence with the word SIKE.
  2. You can sing the rap to the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and can do the Carlton
  3. You know that 'WOAH' comes from Joey on Blossom
  4. If you ever watched 'Fraggle Rock'
  5. It was actually worth getting up early on a Saturday to watch cartoons.
  6. You wore a ponytail on the side of your head.
  7. You got super-excited when it was Oregon Trail day in computer class at school.
  8. You made your mom buy one of those clips that would hold your shirt in a knot on the side.
  9. You wore stonewashed Jordache jean jackets and were proud of it.
  10. You know the profound meaning of ' WAX ON , WAX OFF'
  11. You wanted to be a Goonie.
  12. You ever wore fluorescent clothing
  13. You can remember what Michael Jackson looked like before his nose fell off and his cheeks shifted.
  14. You have ever pondered why Smurfette was the only female smurf.
  15. You took lunch boxes to school...and traded Garbage Pailkids in the schoolyard.
  16. You still get the urge to say 'NOT' after every sentence.
  17. You thought your childhood friends would never leave because you exchanged handmade friendship bracelets.
  18. You ever owned a pair of Jelly-Shoes.
  19. After you saw Pee-Wee's Big Adventure you kept saying 'I know you are, but what am I?'
  20. You remember 'I've fallen and I can't get up'
  21. You remember going to the skating rink before there were inline skates.
  22. You have ever played with a Skip-It.
  23. You remember boom boxes and walking around with one on your shoulder like you were all that.
  24. You remember watching both Gremlins movies.
  25. You thought Doogie Howser/Samantha Micelli was hot.
  26. You remember Alf, the lil furry brown alien from Melmac.
  27. You remember New Kids on the Block when they were cool...and don't even flinch when people refer to them as 'NKOTB'
  28. You knew all the characters names and their life stories on 'Saved By The Bell,' The ORIGINAL class.
  29. You know all the words to Bon Jovi - SHOT THROUGH THE HEART.
  30. You just sang those words to yourself.
  31. You still sing 'We are the World'
  32. You tight rolled your jeans.
  33. You owned a bannana clip.
  34. You remember 'Where's the Beef?'
  35. You used to (and probably still do) say 'What you talkin' 'bout Willis?'
  36. You're still singing shot through the heart in your head, aren't you!

 

1988 vs. 2008

Think the iPhone is pricey? The cool cell phone of 1988 cost $4,382 in today's dollars. A 150MB hard drive? $8,755. Take a trip with us down memory lane and you'll never whine about the price of a gadget again.

It's easy to forgive your Tandy desktop or your Motorola portable for their limitations -- after all, they were technological infants.

What we often forget, though, is how expensive that crude neolithic junk was! So join us on a trip two decades back in technology's history -- and we bet that the next time you're charged $895 for a small square of plastic and transistors, you'll smile and say, "Wow, what a bargain!"

Home Desktop PCs
Tandy 1000 TL
 1988: Tandy 1000 TL

  • Price: $1,400 ($2,454 adjusted for inflation)
  • CPU: Intel 80286
  • RAM: 640KB
  • Storage: 3.5-inch floppy
  • Monitor: 14-inch, 640-by-200 RGB CRT, 16 colors  
 
HP Pavilion Elite m9100z series
2008: HP Pavilion Elite m9100z series

  • Price: about $1,000
  • CPU: 2.8-GHz AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ dual-core
  • RAM: 2GB
  • Storage: 750GB HD, CD/DVD recorder
  • Monitor: 17-inch, 1440-by-900 LCD, 16.7 million colors
 

Laptop PCs
Toshiba T1200H
1988:Toshiba T1200H

  • Price: $4,098 ($7,182 adjusted for inflation)
  • CPU: 4.77-/9.54-MHz Intel 80C86
  • RAM: 1MB
  • Storage: 20MB hard drive, 720KB floppy drive
  • Display: 9.4-inch supertwist LCD
  • Weight: 14 pounds (including modem, charger, and case)
  • Battery life: 2 hours
Lenovo ThinkPad X61
2008:Lenovo ThinkPad X61

  • Price: $1,724
  • CPU: 2-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300
  • RAM: 2GB
  • Storage: 160GB HD, PC Card slot, SD Card slot, external CD/DVD recorder
  • Display: 12.1-inch 1024-by-768 LCD, 16.7 million colors
  • Weight: 3.6 pounds (6.1 pounds including adapter, ultrabase, and DVD burner)
  • Battery life: 6 hours
 

Color Printers
Alps ALQ300
1988: AlpsALQ300
  • Price: $995 ($1,744 adjusted for inflation)
  • Printhead: 24-pin color dot-matrix
  • Speed: 31 seconds/page in letter-quality mode, up to 10 minutes/page for color graphics
  • Interface: Serial
Canon Pixma iP3500
2008: Canon Pixma iP3500
  • Price: $80
  • Printhead: 4800-by-1200-dpi color, 1,600 nozzles
  • Speed: as fast as 3.5 seconds/page in color
  • Interface: USB 2.0 and PictBridge
 

Internet Access
CompuServe
1988: CompuServe
  • Price: $6.00 to $47.50 per hour ($11 to $83 adjusted for inflation)
  • Connection: dial-up
  • Speed: 300 to 9,600 baud
  • Services: 400 databases, covering news, shopping, finance and the like; 140 discussion groups, e-mail
AT&T Elite DSL
2008: AT&T Elite DSL
  • Price: $35 per month
  • Connection: Digital Subscriber Line
  • Speed: 6 mbps
  • Services: nearly anything you can imagine
 

Cell Phones
Motorola DynaTAC 8500XL
1988: Motorola DynaTAC 8500XL
  • Price: $2,500 ($4,382 adjusted for inflation)
  • Technology: analog
  • Weight: 28 ounces
  • Talk time: one hour
Apple iPhone
2008: Apple iPhone
  • Price: $399 (with two-year service agreement)
  • Technology: EDGE/GSM quad-band
  • Weight: 5 ounces
  • Talk time: eight hours
 

Big-Screen TVs
Mitsubishi Diamond Vision II 3503
1988: Mitsubishi Diamond Vision II 3503
  • Price: $3,000 ($5,258 adjusted for inflation)
  • Size: 35 inches
  • Resolution: 480 lines, interlaced
  • Format: NTSC
  • Display technology: CRT
Panasonic TH-50PZ77U HDTV
2008: Panasonic TH-50PZ77U HDTV
  • Price: $2,300
  • Size: 50 inches
  • Resolution: 1080 lines, progressive scan
  • Format: ATSC
  • Display technology: plasma
 

Video Players
Pioneer CLD-1010 Laserdisc Player
1988: Pioneer CLD-1010 Laserdisc Player
  • Price: $1,427 ($2,278 adjusted for inflation)
  • Resolution: 420-line
  • Output: composite
  • Media supported: Laserdisc, CD-audio, CD-video
Panasonic DMP-BD30K Blu-ray Disc Player
2008: Panasonic DMP-BD30K Blu-ray Disc Player
  • Price: $500
  • Resolution: 1080-line
  • Output: HDMI
  • Media supported: Blu-ray 1.1, DVD (with upscaling), CD
 

Portable Audio Players
Sony Discman D-10
1988: Sony Discman D-10
  • Price: $350 ($613 adjusted for inflation)
  • Format: CD-audio
  • Capacity: 650MB or 70 minutes
  • Batterylife: 4 hours
  • Weight: 14 ounces 
Apple iPod Touch
 2008: Apple iPod Touch
  • Price: $299
  • Formats: AAC/MP3/AIFF/WAV/ lossless audio
  • Capacity: 8GB or 87 hours
  • Batterylife: 22 hours of audio or 5 hours video
  • Weight: 4.2 ounces
 

Game Consoles
Nintendo NES
1988: Nintendo NES
  • Price: $200 ($351 adjusted for inflation)
  • CPU: 1.79-MHz 8-bit
  • RAM: 2KB
  • Game format: cartridge
Sony PlayStation 3 40GB
2008: Sony PlayStation 3 40GB
  • Price: $399
  • CPU: 3.2-GHz cell
  • RAM: 256MB
  • Game format: optical- and hard-disk-based games with Internet connectivity

 

1988 Facts

Economy
President:  Ronald W. Reagan 
Vice President:  George Bush 

Population: 
244,498,982 
Life expectancy:  74.9 years 

Dow-Jones 
 
High:  2,183 
Low:  1,879 

Federal spending: 
$1064.14 billion 
Federal debt:  $2601.3 billion 
Inflation:  4.7% 
Consumer Price Index:  118.3 
Unemployment:  6.2% 

Prices
Cost of a new home:  $138,300.00 
Cost of a new car:  $14,065
Median Household Income:  $27,225.00 
Cost of a first-class stamp:  $0.22 ($0.25 as of 4/3/88) 
Cost of a gallon of regular gas:  $1.08 
Cost of a dozen eggs:  $0.89 
Cost of a gallon of Milk:  $2.30

Music
Top 10 Singles Top Ten Albums
  1. Faith - George Michael
  2. Need You Tonight - INXS
  3. Got My Mind Set On You - George Harrison
  4. Never Gonna Give You Up - Rick Astley
  5. Sweet Child 'O Mine - Guns N' Roses
  6. So Emotional - Whitney Houston
  7. Heaven Is A Place on Earth - Belinda Carlisle
  8. Could've Been - Tiffany
  9. Hands to Heaven - Breathe
  10. Roll With It - Steve Winwood
  1. Faith - George Michael
  2. Tiffany - Tiffany
  3. OU812 - Van Halen
  4. Hysteria - Def Leppard
  5. Appetite for Destruction - Guns n' Roses
  6. Roll With It - Steve Winwood
  7. Tracy Chapman - Tracy Chapman
  8. New Jersey - Bon Jovi
  9. Rattle And Hum - U2
  10. Giving You The Best That I Got - Anita Baker
TV & Movies
TV Favorites Top Ten Grossing Movies
  1. Roseanne
  2. The Cosby Show
  3. A Different World
  4. Cheers
  5. 60 Minutes
  6. The Golden Girls
  7. Who's the Boss?
  8. The Wonder Years
  9. Murder She Wrote
  10. Empty Nest
  1. Rain Man
  2. Who Framed Roger Rabbit
  3. Coming to America
  4. Big
  5. Twins
  6. Crocodile Dundee II
  7. Die Hard
  8. Cocktail
  9. The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!
  10. Oliver & Company
Sports
Football
  • Superbowl XXIII : SAN FRANCISCO 20 - Cincinnati 16
  • Pro MVP: Boomer Esiason, Cincinnati, QB & Randall Cunningham, Phila, QB  
  • College Football: Notre Dame
  • Heisman Trophy: Barry Sanders, Oklahoma St., RB
  • Rose Bowl: Michigan 22, USC 14
  • Orange Bowl: Miami-FL 23, Nebraska 3
  • Cotton Bowl: UCLA 17, Arkansas 3
  • Sugar Bowl: Florida St. 13, Auburn 7
Basketball

  • NBA Championship
  • Winner: LA Lakers 4-3 (LWWLLWW) - Coach: Pat Riley
  • Opposing Team: DETROIT PISTONS - Coach: Chuck Daly  
  • NBA MVP: Michael Jordan, Chicago, G Ave Score: 35  
  • NCAA National Champions: Kansas 27-11 - Coach: Larry Brown
Baseball

  • World Series
    Winner: LA DODGERS 4-1 (WWLWW) - Coach: Tommy Lasorda
    Opposing Team: Oakland A's - Coach: Tony La Russa
  • National League
    MVP: Kirk Gibson, LA - OF
    Rookie of the Year: Chris Sabo, Cin - C
  • American League MVP: Jose Canseco, Oak - OF
    Rookie of the Year: Walt Weiss, Oak - SS

 



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