You’re probably wondering what the hell you’re looking at. This is an invoice from MacMall from April of 2001 for a bottom-of-the-pro-line 400 MHz PowerBook with 128 MB of RAM and a 10 GB hard drive. Total cost before additional RAM, optional Airport card, shipping and tax was $2599 according to Apple History. I paid $2852, with an additional 128 MB of RAM and an Airport card. (Added: on Twitter, David Gian-Cursio notes that’s something like $3518 in today’s dollar.)

This isn’t to say the next generation MacBook Pro, which starts at $2200, is cheap. I’m just noting that we used to pay considerably more for professional laptops.