Free Republic

If you're like us, you've probably been holding your breath in anticipation since Commodore USA announced its replica of the famous C64. It promised a keyboard PC that duplicated the original's retro-beige finish, with an Atom CPU and an NVIDIA Ion graphics card under the hood. But despite numerous announcements, and even after a cross-promotion with Tron: Legacy, they've yet to ship any products. The latest word from the company has pre-orders shipping next week, in five different varieties, from a barebones chassis and card reader to the C64x Ultimate – an $895 machine that includes 1TB hard drive and...

Like a first love or a first car, a first computer can hold a special place in people's hearts. For millions of kids who grew up in the 1980s, that first computer was the Commodore 64. Twenty-five years later, that first brush with computer addiction is as strong as ever. Millions of Commmodore 64s were sold in the 1980s. "There was something magical about the C64," says Andreas Wallstrom of Stockholm, Sweden. He remembers the day he first laid eyes on his machine back in 1984. "My father brought it home together with a tape deck, a disk drive, a...

POLICE combing through the house where Natascha Kampusch was held captive for more than eight years have discovered her captor, a communications technician, used an obsolete computer. Gerhard Lang of the Federal Criminal Investigations Bureau said kidnapper Wolfgang Priklopil relied exclusively on a Commodore 64 computer - a model popular in the 1980s but now considered an antique. Lang told reporters the outmoded computer would complicate investigators’ efforts to transfer files for closer examination later, saying it would be difficult "to transmit the data to a modern computer without loss". Priklopil killed himself by jumping in front of a train...

It may be time for a Commodore comeback. No, Lionel Ritchie isn't signing up with his old band. We're talking about Commodore, the venerable computer brand. A Dutch consumer media company is hoping it can tap the power of the VIC 20, the PET and the Commodore 64 to launch a new wave of products, including a home media center device and a portable GPS unit and media player. Yeahronimo Media Ventures, which has offices in Los Angeles and Baarn, the Netherlands, acquired the rights to the Commodore name late last year in a deal worth just over $32.7 million....