Power Computing and Motorola, meanwhile, are hardly standing still. Power Computing offers one model, the PowerTower Pro, with 128 megabytes of RAM, standard . Motorola has one model that zips along at 300 MHz, and includes a 100BaseT Ethernet port as standard equipment. According to rumor, Apple will introduce some new Power Macintosh machines at MacWorld Boston that may run at 350 MHz. The computers are not the only things that have changed.
Memory is far cheaper, too.
Due to trade barriers and tariffs, RAM reached a thousand dollars a megabyte in 1987. If you insisted on spending a thousand dollars in 1997, you'd get 250 to 300 times as much memory as a decade ago. Monitors have changed, too, if not as drastically. It cost a thousand dollars. Similarly, upgradeable CPU cards and Level 2 cache slots allow you to boost the speed of the machine over time instead of tossing everything and starting over.