Posted on 11/20/2010 11:07:35 AM PST by WVKayaker
Today, in 1985, Windows 1.0 is released. It turned out to be a big deal.
(Excerpt) Read more at biggovernment.com ...
I used to buy a lot of stuff from DAK.
My first computer was a used Kaypro that cost me, including a printer, $3,000 in 1984.
Both my wife and wrote our Master's theses on the thing.
I bought another one from DAK as a backup around 1986 for maybe $200 bucks.
I picked up third Kaypro that was sitting next to a dumpster at our apartment complex for free. Brought it home, found a power cord, stuck in a boot disk and it worked great.
I still miss using Wordstar.
And the Kay Pro was a portable!
We had one we took on road trips when I was in the Navy.
You had to attach a tape recorder to it, and then record your programs on the tape. I got as far as being able to program a tic-tac-toe game, and load some of the really basic programs that you could get for it.
I took it back after about a month of playing with it. Then I got a TI 94/A, which could be programmed but also came with games and programs you could load with a plastic insert that looked like the old nintendo games.
I think we sold it at a garage sale in the 90s. I wish I had kept it. Wives.
Then, in 1984, I got an Apple IIc, which cost me around $2400. I got it with an Apple credit card, and paid it off monthly, about $80/month, through the rest of my law school. I kept that until about 1988.
After I started working in 1986, the firm had some Compaq 286 models that I could borrow and work on when I was travelling. They seemed very cool, and when the 386 CPU with an astounding 100mb of hard drive came out, I was even more impressed.
A couple kids later, and we needed a computer for the kids to do educational stuff on. We got a Mac Centris around 1992, and I ended up using it more than the kids. I got my 165c around 1993, and used that until 2000 to run my law practice. I dumped the PC stuff, but still had a 386 laptop, and even had a program that ran Windows on my Macs.
I occasionally tried to use the PCs that were out there, but remained unimpressed until I bought a Pentium model in 99 to use with some online sites that didn't work well with Macs. By then, Mac processors were slow, the software had not improved much during the stagnant years of the 90s, and it made the much cheaper PCs a better choice for me when we upgraded.
I suffered some during the Windows 98 and ME era, was very happy during XP, once I got used to it, and suffered again when Vista came out. I downgraded all our PCs to XP, and there things stayed until Windows 7. We also got some Macs, due mainly to pressure from kids, a few years ago. So now, we have everything, and I grab whatever is handy when I need a computer. I split my time fairly evenly these days between Mac and PC and I don't really have any complaints with either. The thing I like most about my Mac these days is Spaces, which lets me keep the desktop uncluttered. I haven't been able to find anything similar for the PC.
That's my story. I have seen posts from some real old-timers here, guys who go back to punch cards.
Microsoft’s biggest asset was its biggest competitor - IBM.
IBM had a better “graphic interface” operating system - OS - but, it had no real vision of a future that was PC-centric - applications ON the desktop, open networks, client-server computing across those networks; and it had ZERO business acumen for developing an application development community, outside of IBM, for its OS; and it had vested interests in some major, and major business size, clients who did not have any vision either and actually feared IBM NOT investing enough in the legacy systems they were running.
IBM did have all the TECHNICAL ability to compete with Microsoft on the PC desktop; and at the start it had superior technical ideas, and a superior bank account to do that.
Microsoft won the race because in spite of all the technical, knowledge, skill and financial superiority that IBM possessed, it did not understand HOW to run the race, the challenge, that Microsoft put before it.
Microsoft won by default, not because Windows began as some “superior” system, but because IBM failed to use its superior assets to mount a superior method of competition.
Microsoft’s greatest asset was NEVER its technology, it was its marketing savy and IBM’s errors.
i think that there are some holdouts still lurking around here.....LOL!
>>Microsoft’s greatest asset was NEVER its technology, it was its marketing savy and IBM’s errors.<<
Ironically, gates got a piece of every copy of OS/2 sold, since PC-DOS was licensed and not purchased by IBM and even OS/2 has apart of PC-DOS in it.
At the time, IBM didn’t think it was worth it to their money at a toy when it could just pay a few pennies over time and maybe find a small sector that might pay back a bit.
Gates wasn’t brilliant, just well-positioned.
“i think that there are some holdouts still lurking around here.....LOL!”
Me, for one.
I moved over to Linux distros....
You should try one...I recommend Mint.....
That’s what I am running right now, Linux Mint “Gloria”. OS’s are tools and I use whatever one gets a specific job done.
I am in between 9 and 10.
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