29 Apr
2012
29 Apr
'12
7:39 p.m.
I think Home Computing never took off until computers had something
useful that laymen could use them for and they were easy enough for
non-technical person's to use.
Once things like Windows 95, AOL with Instant Messaging and then with
gateways out to the Internet became more prevalent, then you saw more
layman using computers and they became more acceptable. The 70's, 80's
and early 90's they were still geekdom realm products and no teenage
girl, stay at home mom or basement "future" blogger would be caught dead
being known to have a computer.
As for computers in the 80's and such... home computing's problem was
people wanted the same features as the computers at work, to be at work
with an 80 column system, 10mb HD, good quality software and then come
home to an 8bit computer, with floppies, 40 column video and wannabe
attempts at business-type applications just didn't cut it.
ben wrote:
On 4/29/2012 12:25 PM, TeoZ wrote:
Home computing never took off until the software industry exploded.
There are tons of computer models like the ADAM and my Timex 2068 that
never went anywhere because there was little software available for the
masses. Plenty of people had computers before the 80's, they just tended
to write their own software as needed.
I tend to think the lack of floppy disk with a real OS , killed the
8 bitters
out there. I was just looking at some old mags from the 80's,PC DOS and
CP/M was it for general purpose OS's. I wanted to get a 6809 machine
back then, but I could not find software to with the hardware.
Ben.