I remember genealogy before computers, before the Internet. Those definitely were not the good old days for genealogists. Computers would be worth their cost if they did but one thing -provide the ease they do of recording data and spewing it out on various genealogical forms. That alone was a tremendous advantage over hand-copying genealogical data, especially considering my marginally legible scrawl. But that's only the beginning of what computers offer genealogists.
Computers allow genealogists to share data with very little effort.
In seconds, a computer can copy thousands of names and associated data into a database or export it to share with someone else. No hand copying. No trips to the copy center. Connect your computer to the World Wide Web via the Internet and the whole world becomes your research library. This requires only a modem, a telephone line, software associated with the Internet and a little adventure and frustration in learning.