If we measure the value of the dollar against megabytes of RAM, well, in 01987, the difference between a StarBoard with "2 megs space" and a StarBoard with "2 megs installed" was US$484 (https://archive.org/details/amazing-computing-magazine-1987-...), so a "meg" of RAM cost US$242. Today https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/ says "DDR4-3200 2x8GB" costs US$108; if that means 16GiB, as in 16384 "megs", a "meg" of RAM costs US$0.0066 today.

So the dollar's value has increased by roughly a factor of 36700 over those 38 years, averaging 32% per year.

That would be an average yearly inflation of -24%.

Too bad you can't live in DRAM or eat it when you're hungry.

Sure how does it compare to similar low, middle, high end cpu prices? NVME drives?

They seem to fail to capture a whole lot of things. Supposedly $1 in 2000 is worth $1.88 in 2025. So 88% inflation over the 25 years. Meanwhile the median home price has increased by 150%. Family insurance by 350%. Median college tuition by 225%. Childcare costs have risen by 200%. But sure. We can buy super cheap 65" tvs now. Hurray for us! Literal kings who lived hundreds of years ago couldn't possibly imagine a world with cheap large screen tvs. So the poorest among us should rejoice at the wonders they are able to enjoy while they skip meals and ration their insulin.

They don’t capture anything going up because that would shame dear leader