History Lessons

I have been going through some boxes upstairs, trying to return the chaos that is Xoozland to a level of mere disorganization. (To know me is to love me, and those of you who love me know what I’m talking about!)

One of the things I found was a copy of Windows Magazine from April 1994. I was going to just chuck it into the Blue Box, but after skipping through it a bit, I’ve decided to keep it for a little while longer, as it is a bit of a curiosity now.

the history lesson begins…

The first thing you notice is that there is not a “www” or a “.com” anywhere to be found! A few articles and advertisements mention that you can “download files from the manufacturer’s bulletin board”! “Bulletin board”? What’s a “bulletin board,” you ask? Well, young’uns, a long time before there was “the internet”…

Here’s a few more interesting titbits:
—in the “News” section, on Page 38:
CD-ROMs May End Floppy Swapping
  Installing elaborate software—particularly graphics packages, operating systems and office productivity suites—is a time-consuming process of inserting and removing diskettes. Lots of them. Relief, in the form of a trend toward CD-ROM software distribution, may be in sight. Some vendors have CD versions of their products in the planning stages, and some have begun CD0ROM distribution of mainstream titles.
  Borland and WordPerfect are expected to offer a CD version of Borland Office by mid-year, and Lotus says it is “considering” a CD version of its SmartSuite. But “penetration of Cd-ROM drives” in the SmartSuite audience is relatively low, Lotus says, and retailers would resist stocking another package for a CD-ROM version.
  Microsoft Office isn’t likely to be offered on CD-ROM any time soon, but Microsoft has embraced the CD format for other products…

—in the “New Products” section, on Page 102:
Access Your Top 100 CD-ROMs Easily
  The Cascade CD 100 CD-ROM jukebox puts the top 100 CD-ROMS on your hit parade (over 65GB of information!) at your disposal. Priced at $9,995, the system costs less than two cents per megabyte. The jukebox has a transfer rate of 376KB per second and a disc load time of under six seconds…