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[Humor] Traveling in time   [Humor]

By: Laurent Duchastel     Montréal, Québec  
Date: Sep 14,2004 at 03:40

The text below has been written in 1988, trying to describe a then-in-the-future 1999 computer show. I find it very funny and prophetic, although the author, Paul Somerson, failed to predict correctly the real industry leaders. He focused a lot on IBM, thought that Microsoft would still produced OS/2 and had no clue whatsoever about the coming of Internet. Yet, he had grounded sarcastic comments about industry marketing technobabble and the futility of the endless hardware/software race. Have fun!

* * *

Paul SOMERSON

PC/Computing, September 23, 1988

Editor's Note: We discovered this story on our electronic mail system and
are publishing it exactly as received, even though it is mysteriously dated
11 years in the future.

Las Vegas, Nov. 20 - The fall 1999 Comdex was, as always, a bit
disappointing. The star of the show was clearly the Yamagazi RoomTemp
CryoModem I'm using to transmit this story. Yamagazi claims it blitzes out
data faster than the speed of light, which means this report might have
made it back to the office before the show even took place.

This year, the computer industry's companion show—Legaldex—nearly outdrew
the hardware and software exhibits. With so many pending lawsuits and so
much money at stake, it's really no surprise that Legaldex sprawled into 11
hotel ballrooms, two parking lots, and a hallway at the Liberace museum.
The Apple booths alone commanded more than 30,000 square feet of space.

In what has turned into an annual tradition, IBM once again trotted out a
new graphics standard, the 3DGA. Compatible with the MGA, MCGA, HGA, EGA,
VGA, EVGA, QGA, VVGA, VHGA, VQGA, VMGA, VAGA, EAGA, GAGA, and, of course,
CGA boards, this new standard heralds a "bold new era of channel
profitability," according to IBM president and owner Sheik Akmar Mumani:
"Now at last serious business users can have their fancy 3-D graphs float
in space." Big Blue also displayed yet another new keyboard. The 143-key
model sports 6 randomly scattered Ctrl keys, three more function keys, and
an entire pad of SysRq keys (though IBM did not announce why anyone needs
even one). To counter IBM's new Blubus architecture, AST/Quadram/ Hyundai
announced Blubus-Plus, with an additional data line and slightly more
shielding. Blubus throws off so much RF interference that airborne laptop
users are able to make their planes bank left and right by leaning on the
cursor arrow keys.

The fastest-selling product at the show was IBM's just-released TBR
(Technical Bug Reference) manual, a fat compendium of IBM BIOS- and chip-
level errors that the industry has had to adopt as standards.

In response to the new IBM line of 240MHz machines, Compaq/Dell announced a
242MHz screamer, which it claims "makes the IBM box look like it's playing
dead." At the other end of the spectrum, we counted 35 manufacturers still
selling replacement motherboards for the original PC-1, switchable between
4.77MHz and 180MHz.

Sponsors of next year's millennial Comdex are planning to call Comdex 2000
"Finally, the Year of the LAN." Other vendors are proposing that Comdex
2000 be dubbed "The Year of the Home Application," in an effort to prod the
industry into developing at least one product that could justify buying a
computer for use at home.

Ever-youthful Bill Gates's keynote address, "OS/9: The One You've Really,
Really Been Waiting For," blunted criticism that this newest version was
still too hard to use, too slow, and too memory-hungry: "Even though no
third-party vendors have taken advantage of the advanced capabilities of
the seven previous editions, dozens of developers are porting their
applications over. And it will run just fine on any system with 30
megabytes of RAM, although you may need a bit more for your data."

In the word processing arena, MicroPro, Microsoft, and WordPerfect have
packed even more features into their bloated programs. MicroPro has
purchased so many third-party utilities that WordStar Professional Classic
7.3 is now delivered on 73 disks. WordPerfect has streamlined its 16-volume
manual.

Finally, Lotus announced its 1-2-3 WZ 50-dimension spreadsheet, a "quantum
leap" above its previous 1-2-3 VZ 45-dimension version. Although users have
been demanding this added power, say market analysts, they're still not
exactly sure what to do with more than three dimensions. When pressed for a
delivery date, Lotus officials would only say "sometime in the first
quarter of the coming millennium." We can hardly wait.

Copyright (c) PC/Computing 1988.

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