I realize you said the early 80's, but the 80's, in-general, encompassed a ton of progress: from the 8 bit Apple, Commodore, Ataris, to the IBM PC and the clone

I realize you said the early 80's, but the 80's, in-general, encompassed a ton of progress: from the 8 bit Apple, Commodore, Ataris, to the IBM PC and the clone wars, to the rise of the 16-bit Mac, Amiga, ST. Even the 386 was available by 1986. There were also many high end 32-bit workstations (Sun, NeXT, SGI...) Tons of variety in hardware. The 90's was more about software (NT, Linux), and connectivity (dialup Internet goes mainstream, the first home broadband connections, etc.) Hardware felt mostly incremental: faster CPU, more RAM.