I still remember paying $520 for a 10 MB hard disk.  Thought it would last forever!
(Now I have over 10 TB attached to my current PC and still need to get another drive soon...)

In 1983, I had an Atari 800XL, a 5" floppy drive, and a dot matrix printer. I even had the Atariwriter program, the word processing cartridge that Alan Alda did the TV commercial for. Anybody remember that?

It really was incredible what coders managed to fit into 64K. Well to be accurate it was something like 68K because those clever bastards did a trick whereby they were switching the kernel in and out when it wasn't needed, giving them an extra 4K to play with. Most of these old assembly guys put today's coders to shame, when you consider how even a ridiculously simple app these days runs into the tens of MB's. I had games on my C64 that were huge in scope and lasted me weeks and weeks of exploration, how in the hell they fit them in there beats me. I guess when you have such a small amount of memory you develop lots of tricks to use it to its full potential. And not a single clock cycle was wasted. 
 
There is still a demo scene devoted to amazing graphics demos that fit into 64K and watching them blows my mind. The way they fit all of these exceedingly clever and complex 3D animation into such a small amount of memory. Lots of math going on of course. Nowadays coders take things like memory and clock cycles for granted and waste an incredible amount of computer power. The mind boggles when you think what kind of potential our current computers could have if people were still coding like those old 8-bit assembly guys. 

Leadfoot
In 1983, I had an Atari 800XL, a 5" floppy drive, and a dot matrix printer. I even had the Atariwriter program, the word processing cartridge that Alan Alda did the TV commercial for. Anybody remember that?

I don't remember that but I had an Atari 800XL at one point, lovely machine. It was a nice change from my C64 because its BASIC had dedicated graphic and sound commands, unlike the Commodore which required you to POKE values into memory to access the hardware. Lots of classic games on the Atari - I spent many long hours with friends playing things like Solo Flight, Rescue On Fractalus and Ballblazer (I could listen to its fractal theme tune for ages). 

I was one of those assembler programmers back in the 70's and 80's.  I made functioning worm war and space invader games on the Trash-80 in only 4k of RAM!  Then the Apple's started to come out which gave us color to play with.  All you need to do to really see the evolution of games is to play ID's Rage where there are Easter Eggs hidden throughout the game that have small areas to commemorate the older games like Quake, Doom, Wolfenstein, etc.  When you see those old textures in immediate comparison to what can be done now it's quite a stark contrast!

I remember when the first Playstation came out around 1994 or so. A bunch of us were high on mushrooms(!) and went over to the house of a friend who called to say he'd just got one. I'll never forget seeing Wipeout for the first time and thinking how utterly real and solid the graphics looked, it was like you could reach into the screen and grab them. So funny to look back at the first Playstation now and realize how lame the graphics are compared to today's games. The funny thing is though, the more realistic games became, the less interest I took in them. Back in the 8 bit days I used to love getting lost in those freaky video game worlds that were abstract out of necessity. I mean you couldn't have hyper-real environments, so you had two dimensional rooms full of platforms with demented penguins and shoes flying around trying to get you. It was trippy! If I want hyper-real, I go outdoors. 

When the computer revolution began, I could only press my face against the glass and watch. I'm not saying I was dirt poor, of course. I couldn't afford dirt. 
 
I watched from a distance as the Timex Sinclair stomped across the Earth. I got to play with a Commodore 64 once, but I didn't know what I was doing. I saw the Vic20 come and go. The Apple II was far too expensive for the lower classes. When the IBM PC came out, I knew it belonged only to the extremely rich and was something I was not meant to wot of. Friends of mine bought Amigas and they boasted that they could run a Mandelbrot generator. We'd look at the strange shapes and I'd ask them how long it would take to finish. They'd tell me that the math was so complex that it needed several hours or even multiple days to complete the image. When it was done, we'd play a game or two. There was one nuclear war game on the Amiga 500 that I absolutely loved. It was hilarious. It featured famous world leaders trash talking each other and hurling nukes. 
 
At work, I used an Osbourne 1 portable computer for awhile. It wasn't really a laptop unless you really did not like your lap. During my lunch breaks, I used that machine to start typing a story that eventually (many years later) turned into a book. 
 
Even though I worked in IT, managing networks, building servers and PCs, I didn't buy a computer with actual money until my kids needed computers for school. All of my other computers were garbage rescues that I got for free. I'd swap parts and Frankenstein a machine that would work for a while. It was always sad when they got pitchforked. 

bapu
We really liked the first season.
 
Got tired of this season after 3 episodes.

You will like the stories around Tangerine Dream, when Edgar Froese's book comes around ... assuming they have not been edited out, as Edgar had 10k jokes about computers knowing music!

Ah yes...  The Timex Sinclair!  Along with the Pet computer, the two least usable boxes because they only came with 1k(!) of memory!  Say what you want quickly, there's only 1,024 bits available! (maybe enough to print this reply - lol!).

craigb
Ah yes...  The Timex Sinclair!  Along with the Pet computer, the two least usable boxes because they only came with 1k(!) of memory!  Say what you want quickly, there's only 1,024 bits available! (maybe enough to print this reply - lol!).

Actually, the Timex/Sinclair 1000 came with 2K of RAM onboard and you could add a 16K memory pack to bring it up to 18K.
 
However, what you're probably thinking about is the original Sinclair ZX80 which came with only 1k of on board RAM. 
 
Timex licensed the North American version of the ZX81 in July of 1981 from the British Sinclair Research Co (which also had 2k on board RAM) and branded it the Timex/Sinclair 1000.
 
In '83 T/S came out with the 1500, but by then the market had already taken off with the Commodore 64 and the TRS-80 (fondly known as the Trash 80!).
 
of course, Apple was climbing the ranks at the same time with sales between the Apple II in '77 and the Apple III in '81.  My friend had an Apple IIE which came out somewhere in between those two.  we would stay up all night playing text based adventure games on it!