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NOW AND AGAIN I get a brutal reminder of how fast things changein the computer field. Last week I was fiddling with the Macintosh and Ready-SetGo, a "desk-top publishing" package from Letraset U.S.A., when into the office walked a semi-retired Osborne I.
You may remember the Osborne. Five years back it was the first complete computer in a suitcase. It cost $1,799, complete with Wordstar, SuperCalc, two dialects of Basic and CP/M. Sure, there were some small problems - a 5-inch screen (vs. 12 on my new, $1,499 generic clone), a 90K disk drive (vs. 30 megabytes), 64K of RAM (vs. 640K), and a keyboard that persisted in falling off the system unit when it was supposedly safely secured.Still, it was one of the wonders of its age. I could, on my little Osborne, duplicate most of the functions of our specialized, multimillion-dollar ATEX typesetting system at Newsday.
It didn't set...