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XT Buyers' Guide, March 1987

carlsson

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While searching for something different, I stumbled upon this article originally published in the magazine InfoWorld, March 9 - 1987. Thanks to Google's scanning and indexing, there probably are dozens of similar articles from throughout the 1980's.

http://books.google.com/books?id=zzAEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA38&lpg=PA38

What strikes me in particular is the table of recommended retail prices, in which the Atari PC seems to have been the cheapest PC XT clone on the market? Indeed it only had 512K and a single 5.25" floppy drive but according to the table it clocked $100 less than more apparent PC clone manufacturers such as Alpha Omega Computer Products, Clone Factory, Eltech Research and all those not even mentioned in this particular article.

It also strikes me the original IBM XT still was at the top end of the price segment, but probably it offerered more in terms of expandability, reliability and of course compatibility. Nobody could really blame IBM for not being compatible with themselves. :-D
 
That was a fun trip down memory lane. The article was interesting, I don't recall the XT being that popular in 1987 since the AT had been out for 3 years and the 386 machines were available or on the horizon. I know by 1987 I had moved up to at least an 80286 processor based machine.

Looking over the ads and seeing the prices makes me wonder how we ever afforded computers back then. The system prices were substantially higher than what we would pay today but components were also expensive. I saw an ad with 64k chips for $9/each. That works out to $910 for 640k! Another ad showed a 30M hard drive for around $450.
 
Nobody could really blame IBM for not being compatible with themselves. :-D
True in 1987.
But a few years later I saw some comparision "Which PC is most IBM PC compatible?", and IBM turned out to be... the least compatible :mrgreen:
Of course this was in the PS/2 era, when IBM deliberately distanced themselves from PC...
 
True in 1987.
But a few years later I saw some comparision "Which PC is most IBM PC compatible?", and IBM turned out to be... the least compatible :mrgreen:
Of course this was in the PS/2 era, when IBM deliberately distanced themselves from PC...

Hehehe. Yes, the history of microcomputing is full of ironies!:)
 
Around that time (a year later) I was looking for an XT and indeed Atari had some of the cheapest offers I remember, also around early 90s still with ATs.
I took me 1.5 years, then I bought a CBM PC-10, that was a special offer. By then XTs were already not really mainstream, but an AT was too expensive for me.
 
I have to say, that link to the article is quite interesting. I found myself scrolling to several of the other pages. Boy how times have changed! Thanks for the link.
 
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