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If you remember this highly advanced games computer the "Sinclair
Spectrum" you will realise how far the world has moved since the 1980's.
I cut my teeth writing my first basic program on this machine and
travelled to many exhibitions demonstrating the capabilities, that
surprised onlookers and inspired me further.
This tiny package of sophistication was designed to play games, but I
turned it into a worker, transformed as it was I churned out graphs and
reports, product lists, price lists, kept inventories and
balanced my cheque book. Connected to a borrowed portable television an
old fashioned tape-recorder with a state of the art Amstrad dot-matrix
printer, as was then, the reports graphs and pictures I printed were
outstanding. On a night it was turned back into a games computer and
that is now history.
Amstrad PCW 8256.
This was the greatest computer I ever had, it never broke down, it never
froze, it never caught a virus, it never had so much as a cough, it just
worked day and night.
If, IBM had gone for the "cpm" operating system designed for the
Amstrad, instead of "dos" we would all now be living in a different
world.
Bill Gates vision of a computer on every desk of every person in America
in those early days was a remarkable insight, many laughed but I guess
we all know who's laughing now.
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