Prices for everything are on the rise. Go out and buy some milk, you are going to be upset in the price compared to what you paid a year ago. Drive through a toll, the rates are higher there too. College tuition has gone through the roof. Don’t even get me started on gas prices, everyone is feeling the pain at the pump. When everything around you is getting expensive, thank god for IT.

A 1 gigabyte hard drive (IBM 3380) from 1980 cost $40,000.00. Oh ya, it was also the size of a refrigerator and weighed over 500 pounds. Skip to present day, a 1 gigabyte drive, the size of an eraser, costs $9.99 with free shipping! The original IBM PC cost $3,000. It was also about 30-40 times slower than computers today, provided only monochrome graphics, and ran on MSDOS. My cell phone today is like a super-computer compared to original PC’s.

Most people take IT for granted. IT is the cornerstone for almost every business today. Communication with the world is easier, and better everyday thanks to IT. Company information can now be stored digitally and is much easier searched than through traditional papers. IT also allows for cost cutting measures outside of hardware costs. Since IT connects people globally, traveling is no longer a necessity. Accounting costs are lowered, and entire industries have been brought up using IT. IT allows companies for easier growth, and keeps information stored in a central location, or many locations.

So the next time your are driving to the pump to pay ever rising gas prices, just remember that for the price you are going to pay for a full tank of gas; you could afford a cell phone which is inherently more powerful than the first NASA space rocket.