* What PC technology did you covet back in '92?
What’s more fun than pulling out your high school yearbook and laughing at the outrageous hairstyles and clothing? How about looking at a PC industry magazine from a dozen years ago to chuckle over what we called “top of the line” at that time? At least there aren’t likely to be embarrassing pictures of you with zits, braces and a funky hair-do in the magazine!
I recently came across a PC World magazine from June 1992. I was thoroughly amused as well as amazed to see how things have changed since then. Let’s take a look at some of the headlines and advertisements of what we were buying a few PC generations ago.
One of the cover stories is “OS/2 challenges Windows.” The bold type says: “IBM’s Release 2.0 runs DOS and Windows apps, but is it better?” As it turned out, it didn’t matter, did it? Better marketing won out over a better product. In the end, IBM ceded both the PC operating system market as well as the PC market to other companies that didn’t have better products, just better ways of creating demand for their products.
Another cover story from 1992: “Fast 486s for less.” Calling them “hot commodities,” this article features “25 new 33-MHz screamers starting under $2,500.” This story drives home two points to me. First of all, it’s amazing how far prices have fallen while speed and feature sets have increased. Second, I don’t think we could find 25 name-brand PC companies today; they have either gone out of business or merged with other companies. Who remembers companies like Blackship and Eltech? The editor’s “Best Buy” as noted in the article was a PC from USA Flex. Who?
And then there’s the “Modem madness” article, which proclaims there are “83 hot 9600-baud racers from $179.” Try explaining to your kids what a modem is and how slow 9600-baud is. “Well, honey, before we had our 6M bit/sec always-on Internet connection, we used to use regular phone lines and a modem to connect to other computers. At 9600-baud, you could download a whole song in just three days.”
There’s a buyer’s guide on dot matrix printers. About 20 products are compared in the price range of $399 to $899. Today, people won’t even buy my old dot matrix printers for $5 at a garage sale.
The articles aren’t the only things to smile at; there are the product ads, too. Fifth Generation Systems ran an ad in this magazine proclaiming that its Direct Access product would make “Windows as easy to use as DOS.” Since when was DOS easy to use?
My favorite ad has to be the one from Sysgen, introducing “the first mobile disks.” The ad says, “Our new 40 to 200 MB portable hard drives are on the move.” There’s a picture of a woman pulling this text book-sized behemoth out of her briefcase. And the best part? The 40M-byte version is available – for a limited time – for only $399! Thanks, but I think I’ll keep my 256M-byte USB storage stick that cost about $40 a year ago. It seems to fit in my purse a bit better.
What is a PC magazine without a question and answer section? You know, where a reader asks his burning question, and a technical expert provides advice. Here’s a great question submitted by David from Seattle: “My disk drive is so full I find myself scavenging every square byte for files to delete. Aren’t there some useless Windows files I can delete?” In view of the growing popularity of Linux in this 21st century, a biased expert answering that question today might be tempted to reply, “Yes, David, ALL of them!”
