| In which country, again? Because in Iberian Penisula, it was full of green phosphor terminals into timesharing systems, and random 16 bit computers from all brands on the more creative side. In 1990 it wasn't certain that PC would really take over, everyone was mostly on MS-DOS, and not everyone was still buying into Windows, which only got 3.0 released in the middle of the year and demanded too expensive hardware for most business. |
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| ▲ | panick21_ 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | That might be your perception but its far from reality. And the reality is what happens in Spain isn't really all that relevant. Globally speaking anything not PC was a rounding error. Even if you take all DEC Terminals sold in the 80s, you only get a fraction of the early sales of the PC by the 1990s. Of course timeshare systems had a huge history and install base, and the same for terminals, but by the late 80s PC sales dwarfed it by ridiculous numbers. Europe generally is more delayed and more fragmented, but the economics of the situation was totally clear and are driven by US home and business demand. | |
| ▲ | anthk 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Ditto in Spain. Until 1996 or so I didn't see WIndows 95 installs. From 1997 they were everywhere. | | |
| ▲ | cmrdporcupine 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Grey-box PC hardware and PCs in general plummeted in price in the early-mid-90s, making them feasible for consumers where they weren't before. Doesn't change the fact that on a worldwide basis IBM PC and clones-of sales were through the roof for business customers from about 84 or so on. Not a bubble at all. There was a period where offices and schools etc would have more heterogenous systems -- especially schools where Apple offered incredibly aggressive educational discounts, and so you'd find a lot of Apple IIs and even the odd Macintosh. But this ended here in Canada at least by about 88, 89. From then on you'd find offices with PCs running DOS -- sometimes Windows -- often running Novel, and using boring business applications like Lotus, WordPerfect or Word, etc. By the time I was in high school in 90, 91, everything was PC. So much so that I ended up ditching my well-loved Atari ST and getting a 486 myself, because the writing was on the wall and the party was over for 68k machines. | | |
| ▲ | anthk a day ago | parent [-] | | In the Spain in the 80's maybe the a bit-loaded neighbour (or families with older brothers and no duties) had a ZX Spectrum and that's it. IBM PC's were for big companies, corporations, banks and such. They were very expensive, maybe the same cost of a small car. Later, in early 90's, yes, lawyers and small companies got DOS PC's once they became cheap enough. Macs in Spain were for people from the Humanities branch. Journalists, editors, writers, media creators, graphic designers, audio producers... |
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