The Computer Chronicles - Comdex (1988)

[@Lurker1979]

I always loved the trade show episodes of the Computer Chronicles.

[@HuggieBear39]

I like watching these trade show episodes. What they thought would be hot and what fizzled out.

[@ian_b]

Me too. They're a great reminder of why the free market beats central planning. Nobody can predict what will best suit peoples needs, you just have to throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks. Many of these ideas seem foolish with hindsight, but at the time it was impossible to know which were and which were not. Come to that, who would have thought that the IBM PC with its rubbish CGA graphics and single bleepy speaker would evolve into the gaming powerhouse platform of the 21st century?

[@wallacelang1374]

During the time that this episode had aired on PBS I was still using Atari DOS 2.0s on my Atari 800XL personal home computer system. However I think that my uncle had a Texas Instruments TI 99/4a personal home computer system, he used it as a word processor while his sons used it as a video game console.

[@Enterprise_IT_support]

I like watching this historical TV channel.

[@TheRealNashvilleLimo]

The fun thing was lugging all that stuff to the booth, finding power outlets, Stores up to 42 numbers on a fac machine.. that Dolphin 16 pound lap pro was on an episode of Miami Vice! no lie!

[@bardo0007]

This is the same year I was invited to COMDEX in Atlanta by Atari , we flew in from Europe in May 1988. Interesting times indeed. Atari 520ST and 1040ST were the big news and a lot cheaper than the Apple. 20 MB hard drive might seem a joke today, but better than storing data on floppy disks LOL .

[@LordmonkeyTRM]

Being British we never got this, but yet it's always felt familiar and it makes me nostalgic

[@TheEricBooth]

Just think. Everything in this video ended up in a landfill a couple years later.

[@fordxbgtfalcon]

Straight facts.

[@TheRealNashvilleLimo]

The music is now a ring town on like 4 Iphones.. so look how far we have come! Byte magazine.... as in "bite"... gotta love that! Even back then the Asian designers had killer hair styles!

[@johneygd]

Finaly a color scanner was revealed,the sega genesis was announced to bring arcade quality games into the home. Nintendo will then soon realize that sega does what nintendon't.

[@wthrz]

And now, Nintendo is what Genesisn't.

[@jefferdbimble3093]

@@wthrz Not clever and that doesn't even makes sense Sega break through Nintendo's monopoly stranglehold on the North American market and showed Nintendo their place. Nintendo has never been able to relive their golden years in the 80's and now the Switch is being outsold by the PS4 by 60 million units. Some "victory" Nintendo has acchieved, huh?

[@solcreate490]

@@jefferdbimble3093 The Switch is a massive success. The PS4 was on the market for over 3 years by the time the Switch released, so being "outsold" by 60 million units makes very little sense when considering the Switch wasn't even a market factor during that sales cycle. A number of criticisms can be aimed at Nintendo, but Sega's victory was short-lived: the mistakes of the early and mid-90s, particularly by the xenophobic Japanese branch of Sega, doomed the company in hardware.

[@nickwallette6201]

Sega finally got home console hardware right with the Dreamcast. That was a well designed console. It was just shackled by half a decade of really poor management. Nintendo, on the other hand... their biggest home console failures - the GameCube, the Wii U - are still really great systems.

[@JaredConnell]

@@jefferdbimble3093 well if you consider that Nintendo is still making consoles and sega is a shell of their former self that now makes games for other company's consoles including Nintendo's, then yes Nintendo is much more successful than sega.

[@vatossan]

5:22 wow i didnt know they already had a PS2 in the 80s, cool.

[@nyccollin]

Funny but everyone else here knows what a PS/2 is. We all felt the same as you on or around 26-10-2000

[@Mintcar923]

Yep and they were also talking about Sony tech👍

[@vatossan]

@@Mintcar923 hmm interesting 6:52 😅

[@dirklesabre8145]

the italian booth presenter was smoking a cigarette, on brand

[@viper5599]

check out that sexy fax lol

[@sambrown9494]

Anyone else spot the representative from Zorin Industries ?

[@jmcasas17]

From a view to a kill...Max Zorin😁

[@AgeingBoyPsychic]

So glad those European standards took off

[@nickwallette6201]

Yeah I didn’t follow that. Was that supposed to be like codepages or something? This was all still pre-Unicode, I think.

[@paradisegoodness]

Why he sad the word PRINTER lika a maniac?))))

[@paradisegoodness]

la la la la.... PRINTER..... la lal la... PRINTER!!!!

[@revinerd]

17:00 Chilean flag!!

[@pnkflyd66]

$13k for a printer

[@oldtwinsna8347]

Well worth it if you needed it and gave you the edge over your competitors. Print media was far more important back then than today. Having professional sharp text and graphics printed on a whim from your desktop was unthinkable just a decade earlier.

[@rooneye]

17:47 Hmmm why didn't India take off as a big player in the PC market? You'd think they would have. Low labor costs etc. with an intelligent population. How comes they didn't become a manufacturing powerhouse like say China?

[@oldtwinsna8347]

corruption, extreme bureaucracy. put an order in to a chinese factory for 1 million widgets and you'll get them done on time, delivered, without fuss. not the case for india.

[@aurathedraak7909]

They purposely out the Iraq flag next to the Israel flag. Lool

[@4jp]

That would be Egypt's flag on the right. Left looks like Denmark and Lichtenstein. Iraq's flag at this time still had three stars in the middle.

[@WhatALoadOfTosca]

I thought it was funny when Stewart was talking about Europe and the first thing we see is the Israeli flag... Only in the Eurovision do Israel fulfil their dream of being European ;)