Bigger boxes get smaller and cheaper

We're quite used to the amazing increases in computer capacity, but let's put something in perspective. A bit more than 10 years ago, I worked for a company that was building a networked file server. Granted, the technology was a bit different (fibre channel vs. USB 2.0). Nevertheless, we were selling a 100GB server for about $100,000. One thousand dollars a gigabyte. In a box that weighed more than 200 pounds. By comparison:

We mustn't, however, forget the maxim that there's no hardware that software can't fill.