Even to a technophobe it’s very clear how much computers have changed in the last twenty years. However it’s often difficult to try and translate this change back into real world information. Economists do it really well when they make statements like :
“When adjusted for inflation and [……..] (insert your least favourite bit of technical economist speak here), the price of a McDonalds hamburger in 1980 could today finance an entire award winning documentary about fast food.”

So it was fascinating to read a quote on the BBC site which did the equivalent of the above statement (without, of course, the reference to fast food). When talking about the technical advances in Intels new chip design, one of the people on the project had this to say :

“Had we used the same transistors that we used in our chips 15 to 20 years ago, the chip would be about the size of a two-storey building,” said Bill Kircos of Intel.