21 Apr
2007
21 Apr
'07
6:04 p.m.
One last comment - I really need to get back to work. My roadtrip
clock is approaching midnight.
That's compared with a bit over $200 million in
PC sales (summed up as "MS-DOS") and about $70 million on Commodore sales,
although this was not split into Amiga and 8-bit.
This tells nothing, as it does not separate the two lines.
So, yes, the bulk of non-engineering students were
doing exactly that and a
C64 would have filled the bill. But I think it's disingenuous to say that an
engineering student, someone with (I hope?) some technical skill and specific
knowledge, would have also used the same thing off at college. That would have
been a logical time to jump ship and buy a new computer if they hadn't by then
already.
What I saw was the jumping of ships occurred while in the first or
second year of school. nearly all went PeeCee (other than the PCjr, I
do not think there was a single piece of real IBM hardware in the
dorms).
Let's say that's true (the low prices
definitely were, but not the old stock
argument in 1989, because the 64C was still being manufactured and Max Toy
and Nigel Shepherd both said as much; but I'll play along and say that's true)
-- so what? A sale is a sale.
A sale in not always a sale. Often a sale is a way to cut losses. With
the 64C, I bet there was just enough momentum to keep it going. but I
doubt it made Commodore a high profit margin.
The point I'm making is that the 64 was still a
major
market force at that time because it was out there, no matter how it did it
or the reasons why.
This is my point - I do not consider it a major force. What was the
share? Six percent and falling? How many of those sales could be
considered "legacy"? About half the C64 kids I knew in high school
ended up buying two C64s, as the first broke down (not counting the
infamous power bricks). I think my friend Bob had to buy three of
them. Those with Ataris and Apples almost never had to replace their
machines.
Furthermore, if low prices were the *only* criterion
that an engineering
student was using to buy his or her system at that time, I can't say you have
a very high opinion of your peers. ;) And going off to school was a prime
time to be looking at new systems.
It seems this did not happen - as I stated above, during the first and
second year, the new machines started to arrive. Basically, it turned
into "my 286 is faster than yours".
The 64 was already by comparison several
times slower than most commodity PCs (and worse against the 286), and was
capped at 64K when most PC systems were being sold with 512K or more.
Other than the big projects (SPICE, SILOS, OS class - very cleverly
done on the VAX), none of the projects would have strained a C64. OK,
so doing some sort of algorithm test might take a minute of CPU time
rather than 15 seconds. Not a big deal.
The 64 also lacked a display that would have
qualified as high-resolution by prevailing standards,
It was certainly enough to display the ideas presented, like control
system behavior, physics experiments, etc..
--
Will