In 1997, a powerful desktop PC had 64 MB. 128 MB was definitely workstation-class, and extremely rare on a laptop. For reference, the SGI O2 workstation came ou

In 1997, a powerful desktop PC had 64 MB. 128 MB was definitely workstation-class, and extremely rare on a laptop. For reference, the SGI O2 workstation came out in late 1996, and standard configurations were 64, 128 and 256MB of RAM, and maxed out at 1 GB (which cost several thousand dollars). The previous SGI Indy (1992 to 1996), still a real beast in 1997 if you had the 180Mhz R5000 version, maxed out at 256 MB. Remember that back then, hardware evolved really fast; I had a 128 MB laptop in 2000. So it went from "unheard of" to "standard" in 5 years or so. My current work machines have had 8 GB for 7 years :)