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Filed under: Fun, Games, News

Buy a piece of home computing history


Who will buy Atari's marketing memories? Maybe you, if you're flush with cash and nostalgia. The fabled Sotheby's auction house is set to sell off a group of Atari marketing materials from the golden age of console gaming, an era which familiarized the average consumer with the concept of interactive play with a big pile of transistors and bits of code.

The collection dates fromt he period between 1981 and 1983 and includes, "2,000 items of widely varying sizes and formats, including manuscript memorandum, internal specification guidelines, original sketches, blue lines, mechanicals, proofs, color separations (including acetates), and screen diagrams"

The whole lot is expected to bring between $150k and $200k US, a sum which represents pure fantasy for most mere mortals. Still, the very idea of owning a piece of that golden period in computing brings a flutter to the heart of many a life-long geek which cut their teeth on Atari's greatest hits and were sucked into a life of code as a result.

For a far less expensive but still incredibly fun trip down memory lane, check out our write-up on the TV commercials of computing's past.

[via Boing Boing]

Filed under: Hardware, Retrocomputing

The history of the personal computer in TV commercials

When the computer takes a big step forward, I always like to take a look back. We can argue all day over whether Microsoft Windows Vista (win your copy from Download Squad here!) is revolutionary, evolutionary or just marketing hype. With around half a billion Dollars being spent on Vista's marketing launch I'd personally lean towards the latter of the three but, it does make me think... What about the marketing for the computers of our past, when home computers promised, as Atari once put it, "A World Beyond Your Wildest Dreams"?

The earliest "home computers required skills far beyond what today's most hands-on computer enthusiasts need to master. The earliest promise of computing at home came from an obscure company called MITS, in the form of the Altair. A DIY, soldering iron and lots of patience required, read output off the LEDs on the front panel, hope you took computer science classes kind of hobby machine, we owe the Altair one major thing; Microsoft. Founded around the BASIC language interpreter Bill Gates and Paul Allen wrote for the fledgling machine, "Micro-Soft" wouldn't be the company we know today without the Altair 8800. In 1977 MITS started selling the Altair as a pre-assembled computer, removing the giant barrier to entry that was assembling the beast from scratch in your basement and creating the personal computer market as we know it.

Of course, it wasn't until the 1980s that the personal computer got a real marketing department. Atari, Apple, Commodore and IBM all duked-it-out in 30 second increments during the early 1980s with ads like these.

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Filed under: Fun, Hardware, Apple, IBM, Microsoft

10 biggest computer flops of all time

10 Biggest Computer Flops of All TimeAh, the flop. The tech industry has had more than its share, and it's never pretty. Miguel Carrasco has collected 10 of the biggest flops in computing history, a list which includes four OSes and six machines. A lot of the computers on the list are considered ahead of their time and still have big followings, like the Apple Newton and Steve Jobs' NeXT cube. I have a big soft spot for #3 on the list, the IBM PCjr, which was my first computer. It was a hunk of junk, and several years obsolete by the time I got mine, but nevertheless I have fond memories of it. Both Microsoft and Apple make strong showings on the list, Microsoft on the software side with the likes of Microsoft Bob and Apple with the afforementioned Newton and some others you'll no doubt remember.

[Via Jason Calacanis, whose first computer was also the PCjr]

Filed under: Fun, Apple, Google

Google has very loyal followers

google has very loyal followersIn a recent study, Google was found to have some of the most loyal followers according to recent studies.

The studies looked at online services, computing, and consumer services divisions of the IT world. The surveys measured the importance in customer's eyes, and which overall services you would recommend.

Apple and Symantec were also ranked high on the Satmetrix survey.

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