How about paying almost $4,000 for a basic PC? Or $7,600 for a printer? That’s how much you would pay for some classic tech items if they were sold today with prices adjusted for inflation.

After having looked at classic hardware before here at Royal Pingdom, we now thought it would be interesting to dip into the pool of great gadgets again, this time focusing on prices.

So with the help of the Consumer Price Index Inflation Calculator, we’ve brought prices of a few classic tech items into the current year.

As you will see, we should be very grateful for what we pay for most tech today.

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Software piracy has been around basically since the inception of software, and copy protection methods almost as long, so today’s discussions around DRM really isn’t anything new. All the way back in 1976, a certain Bill Gates wrote an open letter to a computer hobbyist club complaining that “most of you steal your software.” Back in those days, however, even he considered copy protection to just be in the way and wasn’t an advocate for it.

There has been a huge number of more or less creative methods to prevent people from making illegal copies of games and other software, but the ones we think are the most interesting (and amusing to look back at) are the ones involving actual physical extras, frequently used in the 80′s and early 90′s. Here are a few gems from that era.

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