Houston Chronicle: Presenting the top 10 personal computers of all time

From: Erik S. Klein <classiccmp_at_vintage-computer.com>
Date: Sat Nov 22 22:29:18 2003

You are correct about Bruce Artwick's Flight Simulator which eventually
became the MS product.

The article had several other factual errors (depending on your
interpretation) and was generally pretty soft on supporting selections.
There could and should be a whole pile of machines on any reasonable
list that had a real impact as opposed to things like Dells, Compaqs and
Tandy PC clones.

   Erik Klein
   www.vintage-computer.com
   www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum
   The Vintage Computer Forum

-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-bounces_at_classiccmp.org
[mailto:cctalk-bounces_at_classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Vintage Computer
Festival
Sent: Saturday, November 22, 2003 7:20 PM
To: jcwren_at_jcwren.com; General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: Houston Chronicle: Presenting the top 10 personal computers
of all time

On Sat, 22 Nov 2003, J.C. Wren wrote:

> I can't say that I find all his choices logical, but oh well.
>
> http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/2241419

As could be expected, there are some inaccuracies in the article:

"Among the games that got their start on the C-64: the original SimCity
and what became Microsoft's Flight Simulator." I don't know about
SimCity, but Flight Simulator was first written, I believe, on the Apple
][.

"the Altair (named after a star that was prominent in a Star Trek
episode)
appealed only to the most geeky"

Two things: 1) it is not clear where the Altair name came from; it was
either Ed Roberts' daughter (niece?) who suggested it or Sol Libes, and
2)
the Altair didn't appeal "only to the most geeky", but to anyone who
wanted their own computer back in 1975, which is to say EVERY geek (and
then some). To say that demonstrates inept researching.

Otherwise, it's an OK article. At least he didn't fall into the "first"
trap.

-- 
Sellam Ismail                                        Vintage Computer
Festival
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Received on Sat Nov 22 2003 - 22:29:18 GMT

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