I just wish someone had given me some god damned basic game magazines so I could learn how to use basic on my first computer it was a pentium 60 so as you can imagine I could have had some fun with it had I known how to use the stupid program instead of thinking it was a word processor program
@@rowger8927: That's not true. We use artificial comas routinely these days. If it required a miracle to wake up from one, I don't think we would do that. :)
There was a feeling of something magical at that time! Computers were racing, video games started to be really interesting and Berlin's wall was down, what a time❤
@Sam Mozo forgive my naivety, but couldn't you just like... _not_ eat at places like "Heart Attack Grill"? Or even dont go to Taco bell so often? I seen "Man vs Food" - I know what's going on over there... 🤨 (I also say that as a middle-aged overweight slug of a man who never exercises. Secretly, im salty because im jealous that I can't get In n Out burger where I live👈👈😎)
GOT MY FIRST COMPUTER in 1983 and have worked in I.T. for the last 40 years now. We have come a long long way since this show. Kids nowadays don't appreciate their little computer tablets that have phones. Kids just call them phones.
Credit goes to the smart idea of going with a plug in portable floppy drive instead of cramming it all into the body like most competitors while offering extension memory card technology which again stood out. NEC's were always cool or what..? They just knew how to balance out features on their high quality products. Their engineering was truly cutting edge and practical even way back then. Heck wouldn't be too surprised if some of 'em NEC engineers were later invited to Apple's or HP product design and testing.
They made great products. We had an NEC console television back then, that lasted forever. My parents only recently got rid of it, to upgrade to an LCD television.
That NEC is at 18:40 is really remarkable for its time - solid state memory, no drives, reasonable price... Mr Compaq looks rather peeved when they show it off!
That NEC is the forerunner of the modern laptops we have today. I'm pretty sure the guy from Compaq was rather peeved when he saw that computer. I'm guessing that if that computer had much more up to date stuff, it would have been perfect for our modern time. Man, the people at NEC were really innovative at that time.
That NEC was seriously ahead of it's time, both aesthetically and function wise. I think Compaq guy was impressed and envious. Just look at his face all through that part of the video, he's practically drooling =D
Tyler Nersinger "That NEC is the forerunner of the modern laptops" I'd call it a proto-netbook. (Remember those from 6-8 years ago, which were the predecessors of Chromebooks.) "the people at NEC were really innovative" But 20 years ahead of their time. 2 hours of battery, and a 1MB "SSD" was just too small, even back then.
@@RonJohn63 Biggest thing I noticed was that, out of EVERY "laptop" being shown off, the NEC was the ONLY one that actually resembled what we would consider to be the standard laptop going forward...those guys had their fingers right on the pulse of where things needed to go, even if they hadn't gone that way yet... Hats off, NEC! 😂
I love how they use to make these videos as if the new biggest computer technology was being created. Nowadays you'll never see something like this from the creators, showing off new computers with such excitement. I wasn't around at this time, but I can't imagine the feeling of turning on your TV and seeing what's new to the computer industry, such as colored screens.
I have a time machine if you want to travel there..... But I guarantee within two weeks you will despise that year and want to go back even further..... to the 1950s..... and so on.......
This is insane. Its like, high-profile business. Men in suits, talking a bunch of numbers. A lot of money to be made with the stuff in the room at the time. And they're all gathered around something with the processing power of a tamagotchi or something 😅
That’s the golden time for the western. When Soviet still struggling with basic food support, westerners started to worry about too much fat from McDonald’s. Also so many cool stuff started to introducing at least mid-class families, PC, walkman, sports cars, commercial flights, etc. In 21st century so many things started to rip the “typical western life” off, they are 9-11 tragedy, economic crisis, refugees wave, and COVID ...
I wish Gary Kildall had been home when IBM came to his house to sign the contract for his operating system. Bill Gates would be just another software developer. Gary’s flight lesson that day was the most costly in history.
Sadly, I'm old enough to remember when that was cutting-edge technology. My first "laptop" weighed about 12 pounds and had a 7-inch screen (green text on black - no graphics). And it was so exciting to dial into my work server via dial-up modem at a whopping 300 baud (that's 0.0003 Mbps).
@@rigelark7286 You're probably right. I might have a better appreciation for what computers can do now than someone who didn't struggle with the prehistoric versions of the 1970s and 1980s.
Creator's Remorse consumer Speaks good for Apple: Brainwashed fanboy Consumer/repairman who has conflicting views on repair(his business): OH HE IS AWAKENEEEED.
Brings back alot of memories, used to watch this every week. Busted out laughing when they said the price of those machines. I worked at leading edge in the mid 80's and those clone IBM's ran about 5 grand..
Jesus he fucked up bad in this episode though. "Compaqs first portable" - Gary, their most famous computer that changed the entire industry you work in was a portable that was called "the Compaq portable". Come on Gary. You definitely knew that. Sober up a bit.
All jokes aside he seemed like genuinely interested by the NEC laptop and how a different company tried to deal with issues encountered by both. But yeah, the NEC although undoubtedly slicker, was 1/2 the price but had 1/20th the storage capacity!
18:35 Wow at the form factor of that. It's so thin and sleek compared to others shown. That looks like a modern laptop. I had no idea that was possible in '89.
I got a few of them from Military surplus in the mid 90’s and it was pretty impressive for something at the time. Was also interesting finding hard drives with data and os still on them.
It's ironic how everyone else in the room looked at the guy with that laptop like he was crazy when its almost identical to the design of modern laptops (accounting for tech available back then). Everyone else had like those frankenstein monster units
I bought my first computer five years before that in 1984. I even ran an online BBS forum in the eighties and have been going flat out ever since. Created my first email in the eighties as well. Usually took 24 to 48 hours to get a reply back when you emailed someone, but hey, it was free, no stamp needed! Good times.
Can we please hold a funeral for the man with the Compaq laptop? NEC's representative absolutely demolished him and he had no hope of recovery. What a slaughter. F
No it wasn't. That's just how someone who was a child then thinks or who is viewing it from the lens of a very simple minded, scoped thinking. I see that said by people about every decade, but if they bothered to learn their history, they'd realize it was never 'simple', there was always human suffering, always political horrors going on, always disasters, etc. It's just that today we are better off world wide over all in ways of education, health, less deaths, etc.
@@jeschinstad Agree. The studio lighting = grey at 8:52 and 9:55 shows the middle tinting level of what looks like Photochromic "Transitions" glasses per czcams.com/video/3qeIWhhypc/video.html Too bad no outdoor = dark sunglasses part of this video? That screen appears to be near highest brightness and contrast of these 1989 laptops in studio lighting; curious to see if that '89 screen washed out in outdoor viewing? Even present day COLOR phone screens still have some trouble in full or direct sun; plus isn't good for the selfie-cam sensor unless phone protects!
Is it just me, or does anyone else get teary-eyed watching these older videos? This video came out when I was a sophomore. And that was the first year we got the Apple Macintosh computer. I was the nerd, so I got the task of unboxing, setting up, and loading software. Everyone else was using an Apple 2E. Naturally, the teacher was older and had no interest in newer tech, so I helped teach my peers when we got 2 more Apple Macs. Fun times!
@sideburn Honestly, we couldn't afford those. But we did have pong lol. My best friend next door had an Atari. I would go play Indiana Jones at his house. :-)
@@BassFever4Ever ahh I mean the computers ya. Our Pong is up in my attic 😂 I got my Atari computer when they were liquidating then for like 150 bucks. Probably 83 ish
I just started working on a video project where I’m going to make everything on early 90s hardware and software and put it on CZcams. Using photoshop 2.0, adobe premerie 2.0, Strata Studio pro (what Myst was made with), Electric Image 2.0 (the $7500 cgi software that was used to make Terminator 2 and many other films and tv effects), Rebirth (software synth) etc. Will use vintage Macs, Amiga, Atari etc. it’ll take a long time but should be fun :)
I love how they always put 2 manufacturer competitors at the same table. They would always try to one-up each other with different features, etc. Made it kind of awkward at times too :).
Nowadays companies couldn’t care less. They just pump out dogshit products and up charge it because they can. Todays world is very different than that in this video and it’s sad
It's amazing how many of these laptops use florescent tubes as a lower power solution to backlight the LCDs. The Atari Lynx used the same fluorescent tube for a backlight as well.
@@Tigeron1a That was my thought as well. I could see him going that's the design and he almost seemed envious of the design. The specs were not great, but they nailed it for the future.
These videos are a great way to see how far we've come in portable computers. In 1989, the worlds most powerful super computers couldn't even compete with the performance of a budget smartphone today.
It also showed a better time, were morons weren't glued to their dumb phone screens 24/7, acting as if their life depended on a internet connecton and the ability to photograph their daily dump in the toilet and showcase it on twitter instantly.
+Johannes Dolch When I first bought a PC in the early 1990s, it was a 386 running at 33 Mhz. It had a giant harddrive of 85 Mb and 1 Mb internal memory. It's always easy to laugh at the apparent backwardness of old times but remember, software was smaller too in those days. I had about the same number of games and other applications on my first PC as I have on my current system.
windows 3.0 OS was only 8M and windows 95 was only 50M. programs were also very small, my first computer had 1G of harddrive and it was all I needed.now just my photos folder is over 7G!!
@@hifijohn and when you got alternative to windows like Breadbox Ensemble that looked almost like windows 95 but was only 8MB big, it saved you a lot of disk space and system resources.
I respect these people so much. I like it when they say: we did not have the technology for this or that, until this year. I love how their vision was.
@@rwgeach I bet you don’t know much about Compaq, do you? Compaq said they would not bring out a laptop until the technology was ready, and that’s exactly what they did. They finally brought out a well-designed kick-ass machine, with a 3-hour minimum battery life, small footprint and the first EVER laptop to feature VGA graphics. And it worked out to, because they sold like crazy. Compaq wasn’t willing to scar their reputation by rushing out with a shitty product just to say “we have a laptop now, happy?”
I remember trying to play some racing game on that Compaq (or one very similar) at my friends house and the screen had such a low refresh rate the car looked like one big blur on the track.
lol, Anton, that is so random. I am also one of your subscribers, watching a random video for nostalgia. I suppose that is why I am your subscriber lol.
I remember watching the show as a kid. It was a great way to see what was out there. The nostalgia of the computer chronicles, compuserve, and the evolution of my Atari 400 through c64 and amiga was a great time
imagine back then hearing of Sony's cpu system using 8 286 cpu's back then that would have been a beast of a machine for it's time I would love to have been able to play around on something like that but I was a kid and couldn't afford it back then plus I did not even know it existed😭
To contrast with their discussion of laptops, I am watching this on a tablet. Incredible how far we have come. I was not even in high school when this was made.
yeah that's progress for you solving those hurdles and then getting better and better after that so now your laptop is a beautiful beast thanks to all that work over the years
This was a mindblowing time in the tech world, when engineers as well as executives frequently rode airplanes to meetings all over the world. The laptops featured here were not yet considered practical for use on airline flights, as they were too clumsy to use on seatback trays. Corporate connectivity from hotel rooms was also very primitive, mostly limited to downloading files. What you don't see in this episode are competing laptops from no-name Chinese vendors, which were much more affordable but limited to MS-DOS applications. In 1990, I bought one out of a warehouse in Silicon Valley for $3500. It had a 12-inch 16-color CGA screen, keyboard, floppy drive, and a built-in 20MB hard drive. I took it to on-site meetings with clients at high-tech companies all over the valley, and it enabled me to demo my work on the spot. I think it weighed about 8 pounds and was by far the most profitable gear investment I ever made.
I didn't. The only thing the Nec had going for it was battery life and portability. The Compaq on the other hand was all about performance. And was still quite portable. It also had pretty good battery life considering how powerful it was.
I guess I wasn’t paying attention when I commented; the Compaq actually at minimum will run for an hour longer than the NEC! I’d love to have one of those little NECs, but it would have been a HUGE performance compromise back then. However it was considerably cheaper than the Compaq too.
If time travel was possible why would any one from current time go back why not some one further ahead from the future, "Oh look this is a hollow-gram coming out of my hand's palm its a chip embedded there, every one has it in 2130, that is how we differentiate between real humans and artificial biological lifeforms".
At that time, I was a teenage high school student, and I still remember the era when there were surprises every day. Every day, I could see new technological advancements in magazines, newspapers, and television.
Amazing to think how far we've come as far as laptops go. I'm watching this on a decent Acer from a few years ago that would have probably blown people's minds in 1989
I remember I had a turbo 88 with dual 720 floppies. It was stolen out of my car in Hartford CT. I put an insurance claim in and they sent me enough money to buy a laptop with a 30mb hard drive that was a 286 it was quite a step up. Then I was called into a police station in Canton CT and all my stuff that was stolen out of my car was in the police station. My cousin was the Canton Police chief. I got my stuff back but now I had two laptops. The insurance company never asked for their money back and I think I sold the turbo 88 to a friend in college. Funny thing is: No one dresses in suits any more. I'm a systems engineer and we all wear jeans and polos. I think back in the 80's we came out of our garages and home brew clubs and we put on suits and got jobs at insurance companies and we tried to prove to our mainframe brethren that we were true computer professionals. Now we don't care any more...
you gotta love how they could make those early laptops able to stay up and running when you pulled the plug while it was running that shows how easy that feature must be to add to a laptop if they could get it right back then
So cool that this was a time when color screens first came out. Amazing to be watching on a tiny iPhone with so much more power and 4k incredibly accurate screen.
18:36 LOL look how the 'good but GINORMOUS laptop' guy can't help but be in awe of the ultra light laptop of his competitor. Of course, that handy little laptop has far lower specs than the 'miditower laptop' but it just looks so modern.
When Jim Bartlett from NEC HOME showed up with that laptop, you can tell it was ahead of its time, even the older dude next to him was like WHAT THE FUCK, WOAH!
The fact that it was so compact and it had what would eventually become the ssd were great things. The Lcd quality and battery life were shite though. But the price was decent compared to the rest.
I love it when they put really nerdy engineers from different companies up against each other like that in a fight to the death over which computer is best.
Just 4 years later (1993) I bought my first laptop, had 200mb HD, 4MB RAM, 25 mhz processor and a color screen (about 8 inches or so) and trackball next to the monitor. Lasted about 18 years before the plastic broke but still booted.
These days we yell at our laptops when we told them to sleep, and when we come back, they're all hot and in a coma...won't wake up. Have to reset the damn thing....lose all our unsaved data...
+piffdaddy420 Sort of like Marty McFly stepping back into the 1950s... You're chuckling and shaking your head. Everyone else is stone cold serious. Ten. Grand.
MY GOD look at 9:50... Chefeit looks like his hemorrhoids are flaring up again... why don't you fucking smile some man... jesus christ! the miserable fuck makes everyone else around him act on edge. he should have taken some lessons from Kildall (who is admittedly somewhat awkward on camera but 10,000 x better than stewy "hemorrhoid" chefeit) and fucking relax some! Now, the show is great for its nostalgia value but could have been SOOOOOO much better with a different host.
it is amazing how far our technology has evolved for over 40 years, and today where we are. I watch this channel for its historical significance of it and as a retired IT so I can go back in time , , , ,It is amazing.
18:55 The NEC design shows us the many studies and thinking they put into making the best convenient product from a user's perspective. It may look orthodox compared to all other designs in the same era, but that out of the box thinking is what is needed in such situations. On the other hand we can see how the established image of a desktop computer was gravely impacting the designs at that time. They were stuck working around a set image of how an actual computer looks and trying to make it portable, which resulted in many weird, less user friendly forms.
The main reason laptops were large back then wasn’t so they would look like desktops. They had to be large enough to carry powerful enough components that you had a useful computer in the end. That NEC sacrificed a LOT to be that size. Ports, a real hard drive and a floppy drive. The fact that the NEC flopped so hard is absolute proof that size wasn’t the only thing users were concerned with back then, it was usability. Even computer magazines back then gave the NEC a low score for usability. Once again, yes that NEC is no doubt impressive and I’m sure it was well designed and built being a Japanese product, but all these people thinking it crushed the Compaq and everything else at the time need to do some research, because it did NOT. The Compaq SLT was massively successful, despite being heavier and more expensive than the NEC, because it was a good form factor, had great battery life and offered desktop performance in a small package. We’ve grown obsessed with “thin, thin, thin” these days and I don’t think a lot of these young people in the comments understand that “thin” wasn’t trendy in 1989. Functionality was, however.
1989: $11,000 New
1999: $11 Flea Market
2019: $11,000 Collector's Item
more like $1k for retro users.
I worked in IT back then - and the only people who had these machines were executives and sales people.
Just sold my dad’s sliderule for $110,000
@DrSnausage Yeah some of you guys don't get the date this video was made...
@DrSnausage yeah and we were talking about how much they cost in the 80s...
Never mess with a man with a mustache and tinted sunglasses. He knows his shit and there's a 40% chance he's undercover.
and a 60% chance he's an assassin I think🤔🤔🤔
He probably went and starred in a porno after this shoot.
100% a fed
Dead 😂
That guy is carrying for sure.
"Working pros are using their computers 1 to 2 hours daily." It takes me 1 to 2 hours just to go through my emails each morning.
u r vry special and important person!
this comparison lags ... how many emails did you get in 89 ???
I just wish someone had given me some god damned basic game magazines so I could learn how to use basic on my first computer it was a pentium 60 so as you can imagine I could have had some fun with it had I known how to use the stupid program instead of thinking it was a word processor program
without an ssd one of those old computers would probably take 1 or 2 hours to start up now days🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Not good
When I was a kid, we were too poor to afford a computer, but I still watched this show every day it was on.
That's how everyone does it man.. most people still watch videos of things they can't afford 😂
I hope you can affort one today! God Bless ya!
Hahaha that's me too, why we are too poor to buy such a laptop like that in the video.
now you can't be alive without having a computer in your pocket
@@BlazingBlakesGaming I believe it, I was born in the late 90s
It looks like there is at least one guy in every episode that had cocaine for breakfast
Hey, leave Michael Morris alone.
You're talking about 5:22 aren't you
Well, it was still the 80s
Well you missed out didn't you..... ;-) Bit late there
and raw prostitute sex too
Laptop battery, 1989 - 5 hours, 27 years later - 5 hours
LMFAO!!
Some have better batteries but the important thing to remember is that the laptop of today is several orders of magnitude faster and a lot smaller.
If you want gobs of battery life, be prepared to spend $8,500 like that zenith in 1989 and carry around a few extra pounds.
@Zees Chan Still not good enough
5 hours for $4900 to $8000 compared to 5 hours for less than $1000 27 years later. which one you prefer?
$6500 for a Macintosh laptop…it’s nice to know some things haven’t changed!
It was actually less than the pc laptops on there. They were $8,000!
Same amount of features too lol
Stewart Cheifet is 84 years old and still kicking. The dude is a nerd legend.
He probably frags after work and on the weekends.
Does he still have the comb over or toupee? Or whatever that is on his head?
Stewart Cheifet / Age
85
Born Sep 24, 1938
He had his birthday yesterday.
Happy birthday Stewart, and thank you for the great memories.
Gary Kildall rip
1989: Should I buy now or wait?
2019: Should I buy now or wait?
It was "wait" for the last decade. AMD changed that in the last year or so.
Keepon waiting.
i designed this kind of computer .Before 4 years ago. 33Mhz 32KB ram 32KB ROM , keyboard LCD plus other features
If you wait 25 or 30 years, you will miss out on the utility of having a computer! ;)
Wait few weeks. They are upgrading it to 4K IPS display..🤣🤣🤣😅😅
I like how instead of it going to sleep mode to save battery it goes into a "coma".
problem is, it usually takes a miracle to wake up from a coma.
Omg, I'm dead. lol good catch. 🤣🤣🤣🤣. I'm gonna put my laptop into a coma.
Sounds like the Windows OS we use today 😂
@ufster81 Hybernate 😂
@@rowger8927: That's not true. We use artificial comas routinely these days. If it required a miracle to wake up from one, I don't think we would do that. :)
There was a feeling of something magical at that time! Computers were racing, video games started to be really interesting and Berlin's wall was down, what a time❤
Well that escalated quickly
whoa neat its you
HAI2U Nate!
Uhh, ethernet.
The host didn't even bat an eye when the dude said his laptop retails for ELEVEN THOUSAND DOLLARS (and that's in 1989 money!)
That's why I never saw a laptop till early 2000's
It's about 22,900$ in 2019 money...
@@Annifloyd good GOD that's a lotta foldin' money!
IKR!!!!!
I guess in that time called "new money" method. It reminds me of Great Gatsby
Laptops being so heavy is what prevented the obesity crisis in USA from happening earlier on.
@Sam Mozo Start adding lead fishing weights to the computers.
@Sam Mozo bigger laptop. Bigger battery, more ports. I see this as an absolute win
@Sam Mozo forgive my naivety, but couldn't you just like... _not_ eat at places like "Heart Attack Grill"? Or even dont go to Taco bell so often?
I seen "Man vs Food" - I know what's going on over there... 🤨
(I also say that as a middle-aged overweight slug of a man who never exercises. Secretly, im salty because im jealous that I can't get In n Out burger where I live👈👈😎)
Gaming spec laptop then?
With High specs, and on the heavy side
@@swine13 I think Scotland has a worse diet than the lower classes of the US by far. Blood sausages, offal, fortified wine, etc..
GOT MY FIRST COMPUTER in 1983 and have worked in I.T. for the last 40 years now. We have come a long long way since this show. Kids nowadays don't appreciate their little computer tablets that have phones. Kids just call them phones.
18:35 This guy is presenting a modern laptop. They deserve some credit for that
From the outside, it looks like many of today's laptops
He blew everyone out fthe water with that laptop.
2mb ssd too!
Credit goes to the smart idea of going with a plug in portable floppy drive instead of cramming it all into the body like most competitors while offering extension memory card technology which again stood out. NEC's were always cool or what..? They just knew how to balance out features on their high quality products. Their engineering was truly cutting edge and practical even way back then. Heck wouldn't be too surprised if some of 'em NEC engineers were later invited to Apple's or HP product design and testing.
NEC shows up in 1989 with a modern laptop design (including an SSD) while everyone has a desktop with a battery thrown in it and a screen slapped on
I never knew that NEC even existed back then, I never saw anything like that laptop. I think NEC must have done a poor job advertising it
They made great products. We had an NEC console television back then, that lasted forever. My parents only recently got rid of it, to upgrade to an LCD television.
It's nice, NEC makes some of the best stuff
@@lloydtshare are they still around?
Thats like asking is apple still around, ofcause
That NEC is at 18:40 is really remarkable for its time - solid state memory, no drives, reasonable price... Mr Compaq looks rather peeved when they show it off!
That NEC is the forerunner of the modern laptops we have today. I'm pretty sure the guy from Compaq was rather peeved when he saw that computer. I'm guessing that if that computer had much more up to date stuff, it would have been perfect for our modern time. Man, the people at NEC were really innovative at that time.
That NEC was seriously ahead of it's time, both aesthetically and function wise. I think Compaq guy was impressed and envious. Just look at his face all through that part of the video, he's practically drooling =D
Tyler Nersinger "That NEC is the forerunner of the modern laptops"
I'd call it a proto-netbook. (Remember those from 6-8 years ago, which were the predecessors of Chromebooks.)
"the people at NEC were really innovative"
But 20 years ahead of their time. 2 hours of battery, and a 1MB "SSD" was just too small, even back then.
@@RonJohn63 Biggest thing I noticed was that, out of EVERY "laptop" being shown off, the NEC was the ONLY one that actually resembled what we would consider to be the standard laptop going forward...those guys had their fingers right on the pulse of where things needed to go, even if they hadn't gone that way yet...
Hats off, NEC! 😂
I think compaq guy looked impressed haha. Felt sorry for the last guy sitting next to the PC mag guy who didn't recommend his company lol.
I still think it’s remarkable that Stewart and Gary jolted to life when the lights went up, like two puppets.
I love how they use to make these videos as if the new biggest computer technology was being created. Nowadays you'll never see something like this from the creators, showing off new computers with such excitement. I wasn't around at this time, but I can't imagine the feeling of turning on your TV and seeing what's new to the computer industry, such as colored screens.
Jobs did it on a bigger level with iphone.
Famous words of private Hudson. - 'Yo Game Over man! It's all gone.. JUST GONE!!'
For some reasons, I love the simple old days in the 80s - 90s.
Yup me too
Same, but if I went back in time I'd want my current hardware.
I have a time machine if you want to travel there..... But I guarantee within two weeks you will despise that year and want to go back even further..... to the 1950s..... and so on.......
I didn’t like them then and I never missed them for a second.
@DrSnausage It is what in 30 years people will think of today's computers. It's all relative.
This is insane. Its like, high-profile business. Men in suits, talking a bunch of numbers. A lot of money to be made with the stuff in the room at the time.
And they're all gathered around something with the processing power of a tamagotchi or something 😅
That’s the golden time for the western. When Soviet still struggling with basic food support, westerners started to worry about too much fat from McDonald’s. Also so many cool stuff started to introducing at least mid-class families, PC, walkman, sports cars, commercial flights, etc.
In 21st century so many things started to rip the “typical western life” off, they are 9-11 tragedy, economic crisis, refugees wave, and COVID ...
Gary Kildall was like the Bob Ross of computers.
He was indeed a gem in this world of ours.
May he rest in peace.
Bob Ross was a camper not a pc guy🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
@@raven4k998 he is saying he was like Bob Ross , not that Bob Ross was into computers .. wow our educational system has failed you
@@raven4k998 Wooow. That's another level of dumb.
@@L0kias1 Bob Ross was your daddy eating raw eggs while drinking coffee like a boss bitch🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
@@raven4k998 Why does a retard always have to make a nonsensical reply to a simple and nice comment?
I wish Gary Kildall had been home when IBM came to his house to sign the contract for his operating system. Bill Gates would be just another software developer. Gary’s flight lesson that day was the most costly in history.
We all pay the price every day too with... _ugh Windows._
Lol😂 oh please
@@craigjensen6853 windows is better than mac
Morons from IBM should have called him first, instead knocking his door like Jehovas
@@ens8502 Loooool! You're so right.
Sadly, I'm old enough to remember when that was cutting-edge technology. My first "laptop" weighed about 12 pounds and had a 7-inch screen (green text on black - no graphics). And it was so exciting to dial into my work server via dial-up modem at a whopping 300 baud (that's 0.0003 Mbps).
I used to work in comms with some pretty obselete tech. Baud speed is something I haven't heard since those days. 🤣👍
That's not sad, that's fortunate, sir. My first encounter with computer was in 1996 and I bought my first laptop in 2004. 😎🙏
@@rigelark7286 You're probably right. I might have a better appreciation for what computers can do now than someone who didn't struggle with the prehistoric versions of the 1970s and 1980s.
I guess you were sending bits one by one with that kind of speed ^^
@@fv6876 Oh, no - much faster than that! I was sending 300 bits every second. ;)
6:47 "We'd like to put as many ports as possible"
Apple: THAT'S ILLEGAL!
Louis rossmann
You mean, "undocumented".
@@unnamedchannel1237 no, just an awakened consumer.
Creator's Remorse
consumer Speaks good for Apple: Brainwashed fanboy
Consumer/repairman who has conflicting views on repair(his business):
OH HE IS AWAKENEEEED.
@@amanagarwal1939 Yup, paying for a new laptop is so much better for consumers than replacing/repairing a broken cable.
Brings back alot of memories, used to watch this every week. Busted out laughing when they said the price of those machines. I worked at leading edge in the mid 80's and those clone IBM's ran about 5 grand..
God bless Gary Kildall and he created the World in 1989- Rest in peace & he was a genius.
Genius but not clever enough
Why are you bringing deities into the conversation?
@@incumbentvinyl9291 go back to r/atheism
@@kiran-thetributechannel He was clever enough, But he was murdered, and ruined by a mafia.
Jesus he fucked up bad in this episode though. "Compaqs first portable" - Gary, their most famous computer that changed the entire industry you work in was a portable that was called "the Compaq portable".
Come on Gary. You definitely knew that. Sober up a bit.
19:10 NEC guy showing off "backlit display"
Guy next to him starts drooling, literally! 🤤
Dude Compaq rep didn't take his eyes off that Ultalight lmao. Dude was like "Fuck, I really picked the wrong company"
He starts to feel superior once he mentions the limited battery life and storage
@@kite781 at 19:29 the "shit I'm working on the wrong company" face becomes undisguised
Lol
All jokes aside he seemed like genuinely interested by the NEC laptop and how a different company tried to deal with issues encountered by both. But yeah, the NEC although undoubtedly slicker, was 1/2 the price but had 1/20th the storage capacity!
18:35 Wow at the form factor of that. It's so thin and sleek compared to others shown. That looks like a modern laptop. I had no idea that was possible in '89.
I got a few of them from Military surplus in the mid 90’s and it was pretty impressive for something at the time. Was also interesting finding hard drives with data and os still on them.
Yeah but it's also not running desktop software, limited memory and storage, and that short battery life
It's ironic how everyone else in the room looked at the guy with that laptop like he was crazy when its almost identical to the design of modern laptops (accounting for tech available back then). Everyone else had like those frankenstein monster units
@@Finallybianca How much did you pay for them at the time. My guess is no more than $100 a pop.
@@Kennephone me and my brother could take what we got working, the rest we tore down for scrap basically we worked a deal with the owner.
I bought my first computer five years before that in 1984. I even ran an online BBS forum in the eighties and have been going flat out ever since. Created my first email in the eighties as well. Usually took 24 to 48 hours to get a reply back when you emailed someone, but hey, it was free, no stamp needed! Good times.
Lots of people did. Myself included. C64 mayhem. It was great.
@@fitfogey Odell Lake, Quantum Link and a 1660 Hayes 300 baud modem. Heaven.
I love hearing people just replying with "Yes", "No" to questions, instead of today's exclamatory "Indeed!", "Exactly!", "Absolutely!"...
Can we please hold a funeral for the man with the Compaq laptop? NEC's representative absolutely demolished him and he had no hope of recovery. What a slaughter.
F
He was peering over at that NEC like he was cheating on a test.
@@logicn.reasoning9744 Haha, truth.
Yeah, that was the future and he knew it, in 1989.
he may have quit for a job with NEC after that
Humans are going to be watching these videos for thousands of years.
Not only humans, robots will see this as the origins of their species.
The resolution will be shit on their 1000K monitors but AI may be able to do lossless upscaling and error correction.
I feel like it's already been a thousand years and you're absolutely right.
@@SoldererOfFortune Monitors? they will simulate matter !
I hope so.
Computers from this time frame look so good.
I love these, all these amazing advances for their time but the guys are so chill. It’s like ASMR.
San Mateo in the 1980s must have been so chill lol. They were living the life.
2020: watching videos from 1989 because stuff was more simple back then.
I hear ya!
except peripherals and software lol.
No it wasn't. That's just how someone who was a child then thinks or who is viewing it from the lens of a very simple minded, scoped thinking. I see that said by people about every decade, but if they bothered to learn their history, they'd realize it was never 'simple', there was always human suffering, always political horrors going on, always disasters, etc. It's just that today we are better off world wide over all in ways of education, health, less deaths, etc.
@@FallingGalaxy I think he meant tech was more simple. As in most stuff just did one or two things. But maybe I misunderstood.
When you can wear glasses like that indoors (10:00), you know you speak with authority.
You have to be really brave and a real man to use those glasses in front of other people.
Probably one of those automatic sunglasses, which are normal glasses that becomes darker in bright light.
@@jeschinstad
Agree. The studio lighting = grey at 8:52 and 9:55 shows the middle tinting level of what looks like Photochromic "Transitions" glasses per czcams.com/video/3qeIWhhypc/video.html Too bad no outdoor = dark sunglasses part of this video? That screen appears to be near highest brightness and contrast of these 1989 laptops in studio lighting; curious to see if that '89 screen washed out in outdoor viewing? Even present day COLOR phone screens still have some trouble in full or direct sun; plus isn't good for the selfie-cam sensor unless phone protects!
Last time I saw him he didn't need those glasses to get that aura
He wears those while playing Flight Simulator.
Is it just me, or does anyone else get teary-eyed watching these older videos? This video came out when I was a sophomore. And that was the first year we got the Apple Macintosh computer. I was the nerd, so I got the task of unboxing, setting up, and loading software. Everyone else was using an Apple 2E. Naturally, the teacher was older and had no interest in newer tech, so I helped teach my peers when we got 2 more Apple Macs. Fun times!
I graduated in HS in ‘88. So were you a Commodore or Atari guy 😆
@sideburn Honestly, we couldn't afford those. But we did have pong lol. My best friend next door had an Atari. I would go play Indiana Jones at his house. :-)
@@BassFever4Ever ahh I mean the computers ya. Our Pong is up in my attic 😂 I got my Atari computer when they were liquidating then for like 150 bucks. Probably 83 ish
I have so much nostalgia for early 90s it’s unreal. We were living in the best of times and didn’t realise it.
I just started working on a video project where I’m going to make everything on early 90s hardware and software and put it on CZcams. Using photoshop 2.0, adobe premerie 2.0, Strata Studio pro (what Myst was made with), Electric Image 2.0 (the $7500 cgi software that was used to make Terminator 2 and many other films and tv effects), Rebirth (software synth) etc. Will use vintage Macs, Amiga, Atari etc. it’ll take a long time but should be fun :)
20 Megabytes HDD in 1989 in that form factor is insane!
I love how they always put 2 manufacturer competitors at the same table. They would always try to one-up each other with different features, etc. Made it kind of awkward at times too :).
happens all the time when you do that even if you did it today that's what would happen trust me on that one
The producer is probably laughing his @ss off in the other room.
@@raven4k998Well, that's really hard to believe!
@@Brayn126 I know I was joking it's like how apple used to call there computers super computers they don't do that one anymore🤣
Nowadays companies couldn’t care less. They just pump out dogshit products and up charge it because they can. Todays world is very different than that in this video and it’s sad
Thank goodness for Computer Chronicles. They have digitized their huge library to relieve those early days. Fun to watch.
*relive
"it's got a handle!" Brilliant 😆
It's amazing how many of these laptops use florescent tubes as a lower power solution to backlight the LCDs. The Atari Lynx used the same fluorescent tube for a backlight as well.
18:22 The NEC sales rep knows he just crushed the Compaq demo with his "ultrabook" ... you can see the grin on his face.
2 MB hardisk is enough
Seemed like he wanted to sell the ultrabook himself too.
coolspot18 And 640k of RAM. Wow what a beast.
Yeah you could tell he was looking at it going "well shit...THAT is the future of mobile computer design"
@@Tigeron1a That was my thought as well. I could see him going that's the design and he almost seemed envious of the design. The specs were not great, but they nailed it for the future.
These videos are a great way to see how far we've come in portable computers. In 1989, the worlds most powerful super computers couldn't even compete with the performance of a budget smartphone today.
But they weee not laggy
M'y cell Phone is not laggy
Modern laptops have the worst keyboards though. I wish my laptop had the keyboard from my old IBM ThinkPad.
Back then computer technology moved so fast you would buy that one for 11k and in 2 years it would be completely useless.
It also showed a better time, were morons weren't glued to their dumb phone screens 24/7, acting as if their life depended on a internet connecton and the ability to photograph their daily dump in the toilet and showcase it on twitter instantly.
Love those episodes.
thanks guys for sharing, you awesome!
16:30 "It runs at 12 Megahertz. So its a very high porformance system"
+Johannes Dolch When I first bought a PC in the early 1990s, it was a 386 running at 33 Mhz. It had a giant harddrive of 85 Mb and 1 Mb internal memory. It's always easy to laugh at the apparent backwardness of old times but remember, software was smaller too in those days. I had about the same number of games and other applications on my first PC as I have on my current system.
windows 3.0 OS was only 8M and windows 95 was only 50M. programs were also very small, my first computer had 1G of harddrive and it was all I needed.now just my photos folder is over 7G!!
@@hifijohn and when you got alternative to windows like Breadbox Ensemble
that looked almost like windows 95 but was only 8MB big, it saved you a lot of disk space and system resources.
"porformance"
"It runs at 12 Megahertz. So its a very high porformance system"..... i mean... he's right
I respect these people so much. I like it when they say: we did not have the technology for this or that, until this year. I love how their vision was.
this wasn't a howard stark meme situation though. it was just compaq trying to spin why they only just got around to their first laptop.
@@rwgeach I bet you don’t know much about Compaq, do you? Compaq said they would not bring out a laptop until the technology was ready, and that’s exactly what they did. They finally brought out a well-designed kick-ass machine, with a 3-hour minimum battery life, small footprint and the first EVER laptop to feature VGA graphics. And it worked out to, because they sold like crazy.
Compaq wasn’t willing to scar their reputation by rushing out with a shitty product just to say “we have a laptop now, happy?”
@80scompaqpc shaddap u weakling nerd 4 eyes gimp!
I remember trying to play some racing game on that Compaq (or one very similar) at my friends house and the screen had such a low refresh rate the car looked like one big blur on the track.
Excellent history. My brother is probably still using these. Even his voice messaging is in binary and black and white.
28:20 The first "learn to code" insult XD
Buy a C language manual and learn how to program -Bill Gates
the original Linus Tech tips
Hey Anton youre here! You watch Compiter Chronicles too! Im one of your subscribers!
lol, Anton, that is so random. I am also one of your subscribers, watching a random video for nostalgia. I suppose that is why I am your subscriber lol.
Hello wonderful person!
Look at this wonderful person in the comments.
with neck ties. for cred. 😬
I remember watching the show as a kid. It was a great way to see what was out there. The nostalgia of the computer chronicles, compuserve, and the evolution of my Atari 400 through c64 and amiga was a great time
imagine back then hearing of Sony's cpu system using 8 286 cpu's back then that would have been a beast of a machine for it's time I would love to have been able to play around on something like that but I was a kid and couldn't afford it back then plus I did not even know it existed😭
Computers were magic in those days! They were so much fun. . .new products and change was a constant.
Personal Computers don't exist anymore. They're all connected to artificial intelligence. Retro computers slowly get internet too 😢
15:43 Lets you work anytime - anywhere
this should have been the last warning mankind needed.
lmao exactly my thoughts
Best comment LOL
Change that to work all the time - everywhere.
@@marktaylor8659 LMFAO! If I have ever not regretted reading through comments, this is one of those moments.
More like "all the time, everywhere"
To contrast with their discussion of laptops, I am watching this on a tablet. Incredible how far we have come. I was not even in high school when this was made.
yeah that's progress for you solving those hurdles and then getting better and better after that so now your laptop is a beautiful beast thanks to all that work over the years
This was a mindblowing time in the tech world, when engineers as well as executives frequently rode airplanes to meetings all over the world. The laptops featured here were not yet considered practical for use on airline flights, as they were too clumsy to use on seatback trays. Corporate connectivity from hotel rooms was also very primitive, mostly limited to downloading files. What you don't see in this episode are competing laptops from no-name Chinese vendors, which were much more affordable but limited to MS-DOS applications. In 1990, I bought one out of a warehouse in Silicon Valley for $3500. It had a 12-inch 16-color CGA screen, keyboard, floppy drive, and a built-in 20MB hard drive. I took it to on-site meetings with clients at high-tech companies all over the valley, and it enabled me to demo my work on the spot. I think it weighed about 8 pounds and was by far the most profitable gear investment I ever made.
felt sorry for the other guy when the nec guy started to show his laptop.
I didn't. The only thing the Nec had going for it was battery life and portability. The Compaq on the other hand was all about performance. And was still quite portable. It also had pretty good battery life considering how powerful it was.
The NEC had a 2 Megabyte SSD, which cost $1600 in 1989 funds.
I guess I wasn’t paying attention when I commented; the Compaq actually at minimum will run for an hour longer than the NEC!
I’d love to have one of those little NECs, but it would have been a HUGE performance compromise back then. However it was considerably cheaper than the Compaq too.
@@vitajazz Not really an SSD. It was just a battery backed RAM chips. If the battery was dying, you would have lost all the data.
yeah he was the closest to what we now have i.e. the future
I'd love to just plonk my smartphone on their table in that year and just say "try and beat that"
they would have poked at the screen like cavemen
And what's the battery life? Well, it's up to 10 hours for the first month but then drops to about 2.5 hours
Lol!!
Better if you bring a galaxy fold 2
If time travel was possible why would any one from current time go back why not some one further ahead from the future,
"Oh look this is a hollow-gram coming out of my hand's palm its a chip embedded there, every one has it in 2130, that is how we differentiate between real humans and artificial biological lifeforms".
At that time, I was a teenage high school student, and I still remember the era when there were surprises every day. Every day, I could see new technological advancements in magazines, newspapers, and television.
Amazing to think how far we've come as far as laptops go. I'm watching this on a decent Acer from a few years ago that would have probably blown people's minds in 1989
What I enjoy here is the professionalism, the knowledge, and their ability to communicate the capabilities of their products.
cga ega or vga man she's loaded to the max boy
I remember I had a turbo 88 with dual 720 floppies. It was stolen out of my car in Hartford CT. I put an insurance claim in and they sent me enough money to buy a laptop with a 30mb hard drive that was a 286 it was quite a step up. Then I was called into a police station in Canton CT and all my stuff that was stolen out of my car was in the police station. My cousin was the Canton Police chief. I got my stuff back but now I had two laptops. The insurance company never asked for their money back and I think I sold the turbo 88 to a friend in college. Funny thing is: No one dresses in suits any more. I'm a systems engineer and we all wear jeans and polos. I think back in the 80's we came out of our garages and home brew clubs and we put on suits and got jobs at insurance companies and we tried to prove to our mainframe brethren that we were true computer professionals. Now we don't care any more...
@Owen actually, many working at home these days simply log on while naked.
Sounds like an inside job!
I love all the suits and sunglasses. Ahh the 80's lol
19:10 They way that man licks his lips when looking at that NEC laptop....
Sexy
I didn't notice that exact thing, but my impression of his facial expression was "He has a laptop. I have a nomad". :)
I want those glasses Kevin had on
Man, he looks so cool!
Looks like he just came back from a large scale cocaine deal in Miami.
he probably did!!!
lol, best comment evva!
5:45 those one?
Wow... I remember watching this show on the local PBS station. What a trip down memory lane!
you gotta love how they could make those early laptops able to stay up and running when you pulled the plug while it was running that shows how easy that feature must be to add to a laptop if they could get it right back then
So cool that this was a time when color screens first came out. Amazing to be watching on a tiny iPhone with so much more power and 4k incredibly accurate screen.
Awesome video, cool stuff and very informative.
18:36 LOL look how the 'good but GINORMOUS laptop' guy can't help but be in awe of the ultra light laptop of his competitor. Of course, that handy little laptop has far lower specs than the 'miditower laptop' but it just looks so modern.
Oh boi, wait till I tell you about the current state of handheld consoles
22:26 "Can you prove this thing works?"
My son thought it looks like an oversized DS.
Thanks for the video.
Watching this in 2023. I am amazed at how far we have come...the things has had back then...omg. how did we get anything done?!
When Jim Bartlett from NEC HOME showed up with that laptop, you can tell it was ahead of its time, even the older dude next to him was like WHAT THE FUCK, WOAH!
The fact that it was so compact and it had what would eventually become the ssd were great things. The Lcd quality and battery life were shite though. But the price was decent compared to the rest.
Silicon disk? welcome to the 2010's, now we call it SSD.
The old timer from the other company looks extremely jealous. Or totes jells today
@@rachel596 you know the comment was 3 years ago right?
I dont give a fuck fuck your ssd
@@rachel596 no its 1989 i don't know what youre talking about
@@prajwalgaonkar there born autistic
Its insane how far its went in 34 years
Looks like a relic review of ancient time. Beautiful
those prices are amazingly high, even for that time. Wow how things have changed for the better
I don't think we'll ever need time travel technology, it's practically already here
Time travel started when 1080p became the standard. I'm currently watching NYPD Blue in 1080p and I keep forgetting it's a ~30 year old series. :)
I love it when they put really nerdy engineers from different companies up against each other like that in a fight to the death over which computer is best.
What an amazing situation, bold in it's conception, relentless in it's execution.
Just 4 years later (1993) I bought my first laptop, had 200mb HD, 4MB RAM, 25 mhz processor and a color screen (about 8 inches or so) and trackball next to the monitor. Lasted about 18 years before the plastic broke but still booted.
8:28 "The Processor can go into a coma"
These days we yell at our laptops when we told them to sleep, and when we come back, they're all hot and in a coma...won't wake up. Have to reset the damn thing....lose all our unsaved data...
The marketing guys changed that to sleep mode
Watching this on my 2020 MacBook Pro. What a trip!
So much joy and enthusiasm…
Michael Morris looks like a villain from an 80's kids movie.
he looks like the actor who plays antagonist rebel on many shows now. the kid that is in THE 100 show.. google it.
Holy crap that NEC laptop!
SSD and everything!
Say that again. They should be credited for inventing the laptop
Moses Tekper I think that’s the earliest “modern” looking laptop I’ve seen.
Can’t wait for next episodes. The 90s are gonna be crazy!
I appreciate you leaving the original TV station loadup stuff, retro af
this is amazing... seriously amazing.
+piffdaddy420 Sort of like Marty McFly stepping back into the 1950s... You're chuckling and shaking your head. Everyone else is stone cold serious. Ten. Grand.
MY GOD look at 9:50... Chefeit looks like his hemorrhoids are flaring up again... why don't you fucking smile some man... jesus christ! the miserable fuck makes everyone else around him act on edge. he should have taken some lessons from Kildall (who is admittedly somewhat awkward on camera but 10,000 x better than stewy "hemorrhoid" chefeit) and fucking relax some! Now, the show is great for its nostalgia value but could have been SOOOOOO much better with a different host.
John Lott wow, insane much?
John Lott This vid is not about the host, also not about your obsession with the host. Try to stick to the subject it makes your "life" so much nicer.
2 years after arnold killed that damn predator
he did us all a great service! and next year he would be going to Mars I hear.
2023 still coming to watch here ❤
it is amazing how far our technology has evolved for over 40 years, and today where we are. I watch this channel for its historical significance of it and as a retired IT so I can go back in time , , , ,It is amazing.
It’s interesting to hear their predictions and projections at that time and compare is to what exactly came to fruition.... Good Learning Experience
07:15 "keyboard goes all the way up to F12" - is that two louder than F10? 😁
Why not just make F10 louder?
18:55 The NEC design shows us the many studies and thinking they put into making the best convenient product from a user's perspective. It may look orthodox compared to all other designs in the same era, but that out of the box thinking is what is needed in such situations.
On the other hand we can see how the established image of a desktop computer was gravely impacting the designs at that time. They were stuck working around a set image of how an actual computer looks and trying to make it portable, which resulted in many weird, less user friendly forms.
The main reason laptops were large back then wasn’t so they would look like desktops. They had to be large enough to carry powerful enough components that you had a useful computer in the end. That NEC sacrificed a LOT to be that size. Ports, a real hard drive and a floppy drive. The fact that the NEC flopped so hard is absolute proof that size wasn’t the only thing users were concerned with back then, it was usability. Even computer magazines back then gave the NEC a low score for usability.
Once again, yes that NEC is no doubt impressive and I’m sure it was well designed and built being a Japanese product, but all these people thinking it crushed the Compaq and everything else at the time need to do some research, because it did NOT.
The Compaq SLT was massively successful, despite being heavier and more expensive than the NEC, because it was a good form factor, had great battery life and offered desktop performance in a small package.
We’ve grown obsessed with “thin, thin, thin” these days and I don’t think a lot of these young people in the comments understand that “thin” wasn’t trendy in 1989. Functionality was, however.
Kevin was such a badass. Wow
What I like about these shows is like watching history as it happens in real time. Cool stuff.