Holiday gift-giving advice from Computer Chronicles, circa 1987
I recently stumbled across this 25-year-old holiday gift guide segment – highly amusing in retrospect – that was produced by Computer Chronicles, a popular PBS series from 1981 to 2002.
Featured hosts are Stewart Cheifet, Gary Kildall, George Morrow and Wendy Woods. There’s a bullet list below the video for those who can’t spare the 10 minutes.
So tucked under techie trees and into techie stockings were:
- Sony Picture Computer, a device used to add titles and images to home VCR movies. Price: $400.
- Byline from Ashton-Tate, “the best piece of desktop publishing software that’s come along the pike.” Price: $300.
- Laplink: “… the perfect product … you can’t make a mistake.” Price: $100.
- Higgins personal productivity software from Conetic Systems. (Here’s a 1986 advertisement for the LAN version in Network World.) Price: $200.
- Complete Hand Scanner from Complete PC, “a low-cost way of getting images into the computer system.” Price: $249.
- Toshiba T1000, “one of the newest portables … very inexpensive … the smallest, lightest thing around; about 6 pounds.” Price: $800.
- Diconix battery-operated printer; “very clever.” Price: “$300 or $400.”
- Folding Velcro wallet that can hold up to nine 3.5-inch diskettes. Price: $20.
- “Julie,” a talking doll from World of Wonder: “Julie is supposed to be the world’s most sophisticated doll. It’s got 64K memory.” Price: $100.
- Mr. Game Show, from Galoob, a character “that has a 700-word vocabulary and four different games. .. He comes back with all kinds of insults or compliments, depending on whether you do well or don’t.” TV commercial here. Price: $100
- VideoWorks II, from MacroMind, animation/presentation software for the Mac. Price: $200.
- Ask God, a program that would supposedly answer questions about the Bible. Price: $50.
- Fortune Cookies, an application: “Put it in your computer and every time you turn your computer on you get a fortune.” Price: $6.95.
Looking for something more current? Try the Network World gift guide — “Be a hero for the holidays” — which features more than 150 products.
