In the mid-90s, I remember computers being expensive enough that the game company I worked at offered 0% interest, payroll deduction loans to help employees buy them. Submitting a spreadsheet of parts I intended to use got me the loan money and then payroll took it back around 1% per paycheck for almost two years.
That’s unthinkable to me now given how good and cheap they’ve become. I paid a little under $2K for a P5-90 based system (just over $4K in today’s money).
Cool story - as you may also know, 4K isn't that much compared to 80s prices. The Apple II cost close to 7K in today's dollars. The Apple Lisa would set you back 35K in today's dollars.
Apple Lisa was priced way too high. We had an Apple store with one and people loved to play with it for a few minutes but at its price point no one made a connection with it. Not even people we knew to be independently wealthy and collected 'toys'.
Lisa had an early capacitance keyboard sensitive to EMF. Our building was next to an AM radio station transmitter and talking or music resulted in a steam of ghost characters when you held your hand over it. For demoing the machine I had a ground wire running to an elbow rest and chair bottom. To type comfortably with no ghost I had to have a bare foot resting on the chair legs.
That’s unthinkable to me now given how good and cheap they’ve become. I paid a little under $2K for a P5-90 based system (just over $4K in today’s money).