Looking for statistics on the Computer market of the 80's

On Sun, Sep 22, 2002 at 11:04:13AM +0300, Voyager wrote: I always thought that companies kept their sales figures secret, and (as Sellam mentioned) the business reports that claim to collect sales figures in one place are not necessarily reliable. So my strategy would be: Find a list of brands you want to concentrate on. You already know the common ones, but the categorized lists of Web sites (that Yahoo, AltaVista, etc. maintain) might still be useful. This site has an excellent cross- reference of models along with release dates and technical details (screen resolution, chips used). http://www.machine-room.org/ There are other "overview" sites which I don't have the URLs for right now. Search engines or categorized lists of Web sites will find them with enough patience. Then look for sites that cover specific brands. http://www.mcmordie.co.uk/ has some figures for Acorn computers (click on "The history of Acorn's computers") http://www.apple2history.org/ is an expanded version of some material from 1991 (click where it says "Welcome to the Apple II History" in bold) And don't forget the library. My university library has the "J. Ramade IBM Series" printed by McGraw-Hill; the books mostly cover mainframe topics but there is one on the PC line: AUTHOR Sanchez, Julio, 1938- TITLE IBM microcomputers : a programmer's handbook / Julio Sanchez, Maria P. Canton. PUB INFO New York : McGraw-Hill, c1990. SERIES J. Ranade IBM series. OTHER AUTHOR Canton, Maria P. LCCN 90005870. ISBN 0070545944. which is actually quite complete. And some of these companies are still in business, so maybe you can tell them you're doing research on '80s machines and get the official prices and sales figures. -- Derek