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Doug's Mailbag: Commodore Comeback?

Readers respond to the report of the Commodore 64 being relaunched:

Unfortunately these are simply 'all-in-one' PCs, and not really leveraging the things that made them stand out as awesome the time. Even for an all-in-one, these are crazily overpriced for the less-than-awesome keyboards they bring -- really, their only draw is for nostalgia. The Vic20 and C64/128 were pretty much just simple.

CPU/RAM/video/audio/keyboard boxes; low ram, slow processors, big keyboards. The 'OS' was really a basic console, as was the early Apple desktop. What set the Commodores apart was the cartridge storage, which is really unnecessary now, but does offer a unique method of piracy prevention. The Amiga, though, was a unique and only recently realized vision of co-processing and real multi-tasking. The OE for Amiga is available through a few look-like and act-like projects. While a real leap forward at the time, it would unfortunately take a passionate group to bring it back to a competitive state today.
-Anonymous

I had a good read of their products months ago and nearly screamed 'f*** -- have you seen the price of these things ?!' I'm not going to touch this product until the prices have dropped dramatically -- there is no reason at all to charge the public this amount of money. How is the company going to gain any market share when the computers it sells cost so much?
-TC

If you read their product specs all the way through, you will see that it's a PC in a box that looks like the C64 and it has a C64 emulator. Other than that, it's a fully functional PC that can and does run Windows. I personally am not interested in such a boxy looking computer but I can understand the appeal.
-Charles

This won't work for the sole reason that the company has an animated GIF at the bottom of its Web page.
-Bryan

Share your thoughts with the editors of this newsletter! Write to [email protected]. Letters printed in this newsletter may be edited for length and clarity, and will be credited by first name only (we do NOT print last names or e-mail addresses).

Posted by Doug Barney on 10/24/2011 at 1:18 PM


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