28 Jun
2006
28 Jun
'06
10:25 p.m.
William Donzelli wrote:
Plus it's worth remembering that the software vendors kept a close eye on
hardware developments and wrote their code accordingly. So if a person
interested in upgrading their machine to current spec was also interested in
running the latest apps, they'd be upgrading their video card, disk controller
etc. anyway.
That certainly happened to me on a few occasions back when I used to play the
PC upgrade game. These days I seem to have hit a point where the machine runs
the apps I need nicely, so I don't need to do hardware or software upgrades. I
suspect that's a rarity :)
It's interesting though how MCA and EISA died out, but VLB (briefly) and PCI
did so well. The latter two both required new boards, but there didn't seem to
be a lot of complaints amongst users.
cheers
Jules
Yes, that is
remarkable, but last I checked the PS/2 line doesn't have
*any* ISA slots which means people had to buy sound cards, joystick
adapters, SuperVGA boards, internal modems, etc. etc. all over again.
At 2X the price. That was a colossally bad move for the consumer
market, which ended up driving the market the most anyway.
Was it? Realistically, did a big percentage of new computer sales
during the PS/2 era really involve upgrades? Maybe in the consumer
geek market, but that is not IBM's domain. For new PeeCee sales I
remember at the time (recall that back then most consumer sales were
to folks that never had a PC based computer), most people just wanted
a whole new machine, with perhaps the exceptions being the printer and
tube.