Retro Scan: c1995 Harvey Norman PC Advert

I found one of those family PC magazines under my bed a few weeks ago, dating to somewhere within 1995. It's one of those "finally a computer magazine you can understand" type deals. While the writing and articles are not entertaining in the slightest, since it was a free edition it's full of so many adverts. This is quite okay with me since I have a Retro Scan section to uphold. I didn't add a quick access button under the RGO logo for nothing, you know. 

For those not in Australia or (so I found out on holiday) Singapore (or according to Wikipedia also New Zealand, Slovenia, Ireland, North Ireland, Malaysia AND Croatia) Harvey Norman is one of those places you go to buy furniture, white goods and computers/electronics if you don't like holding onto your money.

Okay, I'll try my best to keep my bias aside about the company for the sake of looking at mid-1990's computers, but hot damn. Every time I'm buying something I price check across all the local stores, and Harvey Norman comes dead last every single time. But that's enough ridicule - let's look at these computers.

Clickey to look closer...

Not much under two grand and that's how Gerry likes it (I'll stop now, I swear). 

While there is the range of computers you'd expect from brands such as Apple, IBM and Compaq before HP guttered them, there are a few brands I'd honestly never heard of. AST were acquired by Samsung in 1996, Olivetti stopped manufacturing computers in 1997 and supposedly Bondwell also stopped in 1993 - so I guess that Notebook is a few years out of date if Wikipedia is to be trusted. Probably explains why it's $800 off, though.

It's a nice glimpse into what the Australian dollar could buy in 1995 none the less. $3895 would pay for a Compaq Presario 833 with a 486, a 270MB hard drive, 8MB of RAM along with the monitor, speakers, keyboard and mouse as well as a ton of software. Whether this was a good deal or not at the time I have no idea, since my life with likely revolving around Lego at that point.

I really want that five grand colour media Texas Instruments notebook, though. It's nice.