File talk:Historical cost of computer memory and storage.svg

Inaccurate and misleading "Disk" line - maybe all lines?

The image is misleading due to the lack of "Disk" data in the 1970s and 1980s and the limited data available is wrong. For example, the 1985 data point of 31,390,000 $/TB is substantially higher than the then readily available $21,904,762 $/MB price of the IBM 3380E. The problem in "Disk" begins at least as early as 1974 and continues thru 1989 when the "Lowest" retail price of HDDs as published online finally fall below that of the published IBM prices for their HDDs. And IBM's published prices were not the lowest of the BUNCH and their mini-computer successors.

The problem lies in the author's methodology of collecting published retail prices and how the retail market changed over time. I suspect the problem applies to all data points but am only knowledgeable about the "Disk" data line. The market changed from computer system manufacturers with dedicated salespersons selling large mainframes and peripherals they manufactured directly to end using organizations to independent manufacturers selling both to system manufacturers and to end users thru direct sales channels such as the web. IBM for most of the era published its list prices but the rest of the BUNCH rarely did and even then the prices were frequently discounted.

As a bare minimum the embedded title should be changed to "Historical minimum advertised retail price of computer memory and storage."

There is no evidence in the source of the data of any exhaustive effort to actually find the minimum advertised retail price and while NewEgg, the principal source in the outer years, is not a bad source it is by no means the lowest source on the web so the entire data set may be incomplete and inaccurate. As such this may not meet the standards of WikiMedia and perhaps should be removed. Tom94022 (talk) 05:56, 7 April 2024 (UTC)