The big deal, with an even bigger price tag, from 1989. Not so very long ago at all. Oh, and note the small print: the monitor and mouse are not included ;)
And in his post, That Was the Future, Ed Driscoll brings us another reminder from way back in 1993: A commercial narrated by Tom Selleck, promising us things as farfetched as being able to get directions from a box in our car to sending faxes (!) from the beach. Amazing.
And I’m still waiting for the Jetson’s flying car. When are we gonna get that?
In 1988 my employer bought one station to run AutoCAD. It was a 386/40MB HD. (“WOW! 40 MB! it will take forever to fill that up.”) Including software, the total was $13,500. I had to share it with another engineer, we booted AutoCAD up out of DOS but I was impressed. (At the time I was taking basic computer classes at the local community college on 286′s with dual 5-1/4″ drives. Had to learn those DOS commands!)
Remember the Tandy’s with the external cassette drives? Click the mouse and watch it start scrolling. And wait. And wait. And wait.
“Remember the Tandy’s with the external cassette drives? Click the mouse and watch it start scrolling. And wait. And wait. And wait.”
My first PC was a TRS-80 around 1979 or ’80 with an external cassette drive–and very much pre-mouse. Lots of fun learning Basic and playing games, but programs definitely took forever to load. Not to mention the risk that the tape would get corrupted and fail.
And we had to walk 17 miles in the snow to use it…
It’s coming…
Flying car seen as solution for rescue
Wow! 84 large for a Tandy! I was carrying a GRiD laptop back then running Word Star, Lotus 123 and CC Mail all based on DOS. Hadn’t even seen Windows yet…
Mouse support included.
Hahaha.