UK Vintage Radio Repair and Restoration Discussion Forum - View Single Post - Early personal computers

Croozer · 23rd May 2020, 10:33 am

Ahhh the missed opportunities of missapplied technology.

I had a Sinclair Spectrum when I started high school. It would have been capable as a word processor but nobody ever used it as such. All of the written work for the Scottish Exam Board Higher Certificates was banged out on an old manual typewriter.

By the early 1990s, my university essays had graduated to an electric typewriter-with 20 character display and 10 page memory! Banks of 386 (!) machines with either DOS or windows 3.1 had just begun to appear at university, but they lacked the student convenience of working from bed.

When I started working, (1993) we had a typewriter each, and a 286 DOS -based computer between two . BUT we also had a typing pool - which saved much time, quality, tipex, and triplicate paper. (We also had access to telex and fax, mainly for issuing press releases) . In 1996 I was still using lettraset, spraymount and graph paper on an offset litho printing press for leaflets etc.

But the point remains. My 1984 Spectrum would have been capable of word processing. But was only ever a games machine, and for more than a decade, in both education and industry, we used various workarounds for written material when I actually had the technology necessary. And that was commonplace. Why?

23rd May 2020, 10:33 am	#52
Croozer Pentode Join Date: Jul 2016 Location: Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. Posts: 110	Re: Early personal computers - what for? Ahhh the missed opportunities of missapplied technology. I had a Sinclair Spectrum when I started high school. It would have been capable as a word processor but nobody ever used it as such. All of the written work for the Scottish Exam Board Higher Certificates was banged out on an old manual typewriter. By the early 1990s, my university essays had graduated to an electric typewriter-with 20 character display and 10 page memory! Banks of 386 (!) machines with either DOS or windows 3.1 had just begun to appear at university, but they lacked the student convenience of working from bed. When I started working, (1993) we had a typewriter each, and a 286 DOS -based computer between two . BUT we also had a typing pool - which saved much time, quality, tipex, and triplicate paper. (We also had access to telex and fax, mainly for issuing press releases) . In 1996 I was still using lettraset, spraymount and graph paper on an offset litho printing press for leaflets etc. But the point remains. My 1984 Spectrum would have been capable of word processing. But was only ever a games machine, and for more than a decade, in both education and industry, we used various workarounds for written material when I actually had the technology necessary. And that was commonplace. Why?