Why were computers so bad in the 80's compared to modern times?

Why were cars so slow in the 30s compared to modern times? Technology has changed and evolved. Both software and hardware developments such as the computer chip have made for both faster and smaller processors.

Comparing computers in the 80’s to today is like comparing an ultralight to a fighter jet. The architecture of microprocessors, chipsets and other peripherals are so much more advanced it’s unfair to classify them as the same technology. In school I studied chip design and specifically microprocessors. It was like a history lesson also because to understand modern processor architecture you had to spend some time with the older architectures. There may have been some planned obsolescence but the advances were incremental. Getting from an 8088 to an i5 is like going from a model T to a Tesla or a Ferrari. That’s not even giving it justice either. It’s almost like comparing a solar system to a galaxy.

Save this Q and ask it again in 30 years.
And in the spirit of @janbb‘s post, why were telephones so clunky and on party lines in the 40s?
Why were TVs housed in such large boxes with such tiny screens?
Why is anything faster and sleeker after decades of development and refinement?

“All computers today run on basically the same tech as they did in the 80’s.”

Um, no. If by ‘basically the same tech” you mean that there are still things named a processor and RAM, etc, then yes. But to consider them the same technology is just wrong. At the very least, miniaturization has come forward by huge leaps. My current computers are quad-cores: I have four ~3 GHz processors in a similar sized area as used to be taken up by one of a much lower speed. There’s now better materials to allow faster, higher fidelity communication between parts. Better heat-sink materials to allow components to work harder without overheating. There’s also economic reasons that higher-quality parts are now cheap enough for a consumer market, etc etc etc.

So yeah, “basically the same tech” only if you take a very, very zoomed out view of the tech.

You must be very young. In the 80s, when computers were just coming in, the things they could do, even at that primitive stage, eclipsed any business or personal technology that had ever come before. Computers seemed right out of Star Trek—I know, I owned one of the first IBMs and later one of the first Macs. The rapid ascendency of computers and peripherals from novelty status to essential business/personal tools had nothing to do with planned obsolesce. It was about supply and demand and the constant push for better and better technology.

It’s easy to look back and wonder why technology couldn’t have been better than it was. The fact is, technology has always been better than it was before and not as good as it will be.

There are a huge number of improvements, but for a simple illustration here’s a comparison of processors.

In 1988 I was using an IBM PC XT for word processing and databases.
A high-end desktop at that time would have a 386 CPU.
Today a medium-speed computer might have an i5 CPU.

8088 processor
8 MHz clock speed
29,000 transistors

386 processor
33 MHz clock speed
275,000 transistors

Core i5–4670 processor
3.4 GHz clock speed
1,400,000,000 transistors

Basically for the same reason that laser-guided bombs and cruise missiles are so much better these days than the dumb iron bombs that were dropped by the millions in WW II, even though “they use the same technology to blow things up”.

Were you just trolling with this question, or do you seriously not understand that the microcomputers of the 1980s couldn’t hold a patch to even the telephones of today? I like @jaytkay‘s response, but he didn’t even touch the issue of RAM and “addressable memory”, nor the high-speed, high-density hard drives that permit the use of modern software (oh, and let’s not even start to compare Windows as an operating system to DOS, and batch processing).

….and even that’s not the full picture. There were major advances in how they operate. Pipelining, multi-core, bit length,expanded instruction sets & internal risc cores just to name a few.

You also have bus architecture, speed and sophistication…

….and GPU architecture, instructions and integration

..and memory speed,refresh rates, architecture and….

..and massive cost reduction and market penetration

..and

..and

I remember being just awed by the ability to move the icons around on the screen with the mouse when we bought our first PC in 1985.

It’s not just advancements in hardware. Coding has changed a lot from the 80’s. There’s a paradigm called Object Oriented Programming that has helped programmers carve up big projects into pieces that all work together. Code tends to build up like a tower. So you have the low-level stuff that takes a lot of time to get right and then other programmers can build stuff on top of that with more expressive languages. This allows programmers today to be more productive than they were in the past.

—I am so over my head now.—-

@Dutchess_III You can think of Object Oriented Programming like a home theater system. You have separate independent components: a TV, an Amplifier/Stereo, speakers, a DVD player, a cable box, maybe an Xbox. Before object oriented programming, all of that stuff would be packed into a single box with everything directly interacting with everything else. You might tweak one part of the system, only to have it create problems in other parts since it was all connected. As your code gets bigger this becomes a nightmare and is totally unmanageable.

With the component concept, each person on the team can be given their own “box” to work on. As long as the inputs and outputs stay consistent, than you’re free to tweak the internals of your own section of the project with the assurance that you’re not screwing up anyone else’s stuff. You don’t need to understand how the TV stuff works as long as your stereo component outputs the video properly. That’s why Object Oriented programming is so powerful, it allows you to build things in pieces without breaking other stuff.