Lack of 8-bit threads (was Re: Linux question)

I suppose my view is colored by my professional experience when I talk about the demise of the 8 bit systems. I'm not a game player and most of my applications exposure has been in areas such as database, spreadsheet, word processing, and business apps (AP, AR, GL, Payroll, Inventory, etc.). Although I've seen Apple ]['s functioning in this capacity as well as various x80 systems, I've never seen a business using a C64 or C128 to do their office "bread and butter" work. Games and educational software simply don't hold much of a place in my universe (I have a fair collection of them from the old SIMCGA days; but they never interested me). So, in my world, by 1985, people were leaving the 8-bitters behind in droves and there were plenty of people to encourage them. Were a company to have introduced a new 8 bit business system in early 1986, they probably wouldn't have made it to 1987. Heaven knows, there were even plenty of "we're 8088/8086 but we're not PC-compatible" casualties during this time. On the other hand, an embedded specialist would probably tell me that 8-bit is alive and well and it's the 16-bit MPUs that are dying a slow death, being displaced by the 32-bit processors such as the ARM family. I guess it depends on your perspective. Cheers, Chuck