My first computer, an Apple IIe cost about $1,800. I think memory serves me right when I say it was $1,400 for the IIe system (included keyboard and monitor) and $400 for the DuoDisk floppy disk stacked drives. This was the early 80s.

Carver Mead at Cal Tech came up with Moore's Law (which, in turn, interprets a remark by one of the founders of Intel, Gordon Moore). The Law says that the number of transistors (or logic elements) in an integrated circuit doubles every two years. A corollary commonly made is that the cost of computing is halved every two years.

Okay, so the new computer cost 1/19th what my Apple IIe cost. How about specs?

CPU speed: 1.5GHz. or about 750 times faster than the Apple IIe.
RAM is 1 Gb or about 8,000 times the Apple IIe.
On-board storage is 4 Gb or about 16,000 times the Apple IIe.
In place of external floppy drives I can use SD cards or a USB flashdrive that can increase storage by some multiple of 4 Gb.

You get the idea, despite its dimunitive size, the no-name notebook/netbook has a lot more computing power, for a lot less money. In bits moved per buck, the no-name has roughly 15,000 times the performance of the Apple IIe. Note that I am only considering the respective CPU chips in this examination of Moore's Law (the CPU chip being probably most indicative of the silicon foundry progress of which Mr. Moore spoke).

How does that fit in with Moore's Law and the passage of 30 years?

An increase of 15,000 times is not the 32,768 times Moore's Law predicts, but it's in the ballpark for these two modest computer systems. The gain of 15,000 times, in fact, represents a doubling over 28 years and I think I actually bought the Apple IIe 29 years ago--seriously. As one can see, Moore's Law, describing one of the most persistent technological phenomenon of our times, has been an invaluable insight for gauging the pace of the information age.

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