Best Buy Sunday Ad From 1996

Oh, how times have changed. I came across an old ad from 1996 on Buzzfeed and it totally put things into perspective on just how fast we are moving with technology. The following pics are all actual pages from a Best Buy ad from a Sunday paper back in 1996.

Back Then: $1899 for a super awesome computer back in 1996 seemed like a really good deal! The processors were lightning fast and there was no way you could ever run out of space with the 1.6 GB hard drive!

Today: Your basic smartphone is 10x faster and has close to 20x the amount of storage space.

Back Then: If you wanted software, you had to fork out the cash for it. Unless you had the bootleg copy on 87 floppy discs. Even then, most software required the CD-ROM to be in the the computer while the program was running.

Today: Two words. App Store.

Back Then: Even in 1996 Best Buy was one of the first places to get CDs for close to half of what other places charged for them. Usually, you could grab the latest albums for around $10 within the first few weeks of release, as well as classic albums for around the same price.

Today: Even though we now have the option to get any single song we want online for just under $1, full album prices, both in store and online are still very comparable to Best Buy's prices 15 years ago.

Back Then: If cordless phones were the Cadillacs of house phones, cordless phones with answering machines attached were Ferraris. Mobile phones were also becoming sleeker but were still the size of bricks and only used for talking, not to mention minutes cost you an arm and a leg. Beepers were still the popular mobile communication device and they were affordable

Today: With the popularity of smartphones, the least used feature on a mobile phone these days is probably the phone itself. In today's society, to meet someone that doesn't have a mobile phone is a rare occurance. Even 9 year olds.

Back Then: A 3.1 GB hard drive was the mac daddy of all hard drives and the $400 price tag reflected that.

Today: A 16GB flash drive will run you about $10. Flash drives twice the size of a $400 hard drive from 1996 are now a common novelty item from businesses, kinda like pens, mousepads and visors. The most ridiculous internal hard drive today has 2000x the amount of storage space and is $100 cheaper.

Back Then: The top of the line portable audio feature was Electronic Skip Protection. So you could tote around your bulky Discman and your CD Book wherever you wanted to go, including your vehicle if you had the fancy tape adaptor and cigarette lighter power adaptor.

Today: You can carry around 100x the amount of music that your biggest CD book could ever hold, and if you wanted to hear a song you didn't have you can just download it instantly. Oh, and I forgot to mention, you can do this all of this on your phone.