The Commodore 64 Turns 30 Years Old

psychlist1972, Flickr

Remember your Commodore 64 computer?  It turns 30 years old this month.

Back in 1982, people didn’t think twice about spending almost $600 (about $1,400 in today’s economy) for a gray box that was then the future of personal computing. To see how far technology has come over the past three decades, if you turned on a Commodore 64 today it would be able to store five or six seconds of one .mp3 audio file (think of how many thousands of songs you might have on your tiny iPod) — and forget about getting on the internet.

I, personally, never had a Commodore 64. I grew up with the best video game system ever developed: the Atari 2600 (the Pac Man death sound effect is a ring tone on my cellphone). The Atari 2600 is even older than the Commodore 64 — it was first released in 1977.