1983 Micro prices (was Re: The Origins of DOS)

[Jules Richardson]

Chris M wrote:
> 
> --- Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk>
> wrote:
> 
>> ...whilst the impression I've got of the US was that
>> people were far more willing 
>> to upgrade systems reasonably frequently to whatever
>> the latest thing 
>> available was.
> 
>  I think the problem with endlessly upgrading an older
> machine was getting support somewhere down that road.
> Software issues come to mind. Older hardware can get
> goofy too, so unless you have an ee degree, it's
> probably often more cost effective to toss the old
> system (for businesses at least).  I think the
> disposable pc is alot more of a reality today then in
> the 80's though.

Yep. I certainly get the impression that there was a lot more fault-finding 
and fixing going on the the UK than the US, though. People were far more 
reluctant to invest money in a machine in the UK unless they could mess around 
with it at the hardware level and stand a chance of fixing any problems 
themselves (which is probably a reflection on UK society as a whole back then, 
rather than being limited to computing)

>> In education, yes. Not so much for home or business
>> use, though. What 
>> timeframe are we talking - say 1982 to 1985 or so?
> 
>  The Nimbus probably came out in o about '85. I don't
> know alot about any of their other products

The other products were far nicer :-) (By calling the Nimbus 'nasty' in my 
other post I meant simply to imply that it was rather uninteresting, not that 
there was anything particularly horrible about it)

> just that they're still around.

Yes, they're one of the few surviving UK computer companies from the 80s. 
Quite possibly the *only* one, although I'm sure someone can come up with 
other examples (there are a few brand-names still about, but they've been 
through all sorts of takeovers and buy-outs that mean they really don't count :-)