The days in which I needed to worry about acne treatment are now behind me, but back in those days I remember buying my first typewriter. Growing up in rural Minnesota, I worked my first job picking rocks out of a field on a local farm; I was injured on that job (run over by the rock trailer) and was unable to work much of the rest of the summer, until finally I healed up enough and landed a paper route that I kept for the next several years as my source of income.

The work I did that summer landed me a Smith-Corona electric typewriter and over the next few years I went through a small fortune in ribbons and correction take. As I recall, that Smith-Corona set me back about $249 in 1981 dollars.

Today, I placed an order for the retail version of Microsoft Office 2007 (I’ve been using a 60-day free trial version up till now, that came on my new Acer Aspire). While the package contains the best modern electronic typewriter known to man – Microsoft Word 2007 – it also has Excel and PowerPoint and OneNote in it.

The price paid in 2008 dollars? Only $119 from Newegg.com. What a difference 28 years makes.