----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian Roth" <broth(a)heathers.stdio.com>
To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Thursday, March 30, 2000 9:29 PM
Subject: Re: iOpener
I stopped by again(I don't trust them) to see if
they came in. I asked
THREE people
on the floor about it and none of them even knew what
it was. They
actually had to
look it up in the computer to find it. I think the
prerequisite to work
there is to
know absolutely nothing about technology. Amazing!
Sounds like K-mart......
In 1989, before I knew any better, I looked at a Commodore Colt (truly AWFUL
PC/XT semi-incompatible)
with 2 x 5.25" DD drives and no hard disk in the local K-Mart. I asked the
assistant what he could tell me about it. He opened a book, looked, and
with a perfectly straight face told me the price. I waited.... He knew it
was a computer and how much it was. That was it. I didn't buy it.
(Fortunately). A friend enlightened me and I went and bought my first IBM
compatible PC. (I'd had a TI/994a for some time - still have it somewhere) A
Clone 286/12 with 1MB ram and a 40mb HDD and a 256k VGA card/Multisync
monitor. Cost AU$4k cash. (Which was a good price for a VGA system in 89!)
(The monitor was around $900 on it's own IIRC). Still have portions of it
here and there in other machines.
The Colt was still there a year and a half later. Some poor sucker bought
it when it was reduced to clear for about a third of the original price (ie
about twice what it was worth) some time after that. Poor bastard.
They stopped selling computers completely not long after.
Cheers
Geoff Roberts