Comment by nostrademons

There's always more to the story than the Internet assumes.

We were quite possibly less privileged than you were, if your dad brought a computer home from work. I grew up with a teacher and a househusband for parents; single-income, and that income made about 1/3 of what engineers or other computer professionals made. My kid had more passport stamps at age 2 than I did at age 18.

It was $2500 because it was a Mac LC, and it was a Mac LC because that could take an Apple 2E card and run both Mac and Apple software, and that was important because my mom was a teacher and had a large library of educational software at school that she could take home. Recall that in those days, software was sold in retail stores (no Internet), and cost $50-100 for kiddie stuff, and like $400 for productivity and compilers. 25 titles and the cost of the computer paid for itself in free software. I think we used about that.

It's a matter of priorities. My parents always prioritized my education: they bought a computer, and whatever software didn't come from my mom's workplace, and any books I wanted, and paid for my college education in full. We didn't have a whole lot other than that: we didn't take a lot of vacations or plane trips (and a single plane trip would cost more than that $2500 in those days), ran our cars into the ground (my mom owned 2 cars over my entire childhood), wore hand-me-downs.