y good software, so the 64 software market boomed, especially the games market. And, as possibly its most important feature, the price was right - the Commodore 64 cost around $400.As with the Apple II, software for the 64 was distributed on audio tapes, or on floppy disks for those who bought the optional floppy disk drive (which cost almost as much as the machine itself). In rare cases plug-in cartridges were also used. Like the VIC-20, the 64 used a TV set as its display device (which is part of the reason it was able to be so cheap).For most of my generation, myself included, the Commodore 64 was the first computer they ever owned or used.Lotus 1-2-3VisiCalc on the Apple II may have sold Wall Street on the idea of electronic spreadsheets, but Lotus 1-2-3 was the spreadsheet that Wall Street adopted. When the IBM PC took over the business world in the early 1980's, Lotus 1-2-3's simple but elegant grid was without question the best spreadsheet available. It added simple chart style graphics and data retrieval functions to the paradigm established by VisiCalc. By the early 1990's, Lotus could brag that Lotus 1-2-3 was the best-selling application of all time. Lotus's period of dominance finally ended when Microsoft Excel came out with a graphical user interface for Microsoft Windows.Compaq - The First PC CloneCompaq's portable almost single handedly created the PC clone market. It weighed a ton (20 pounds), but it was the first successful PC clone. Columbia Data Products just preceded Compaq that year with the first true IBM PC clone, but they didn't survive for long. It was Compaq's quickly gained reputation for quality, and its essentially 100% IBM compatibility (reverse engineered), that created the clone market.Radio Shack's TRS-80 Model 100Years before mainstream notebook computers, Radio Shack came out with a book sized portable with an unbeatable combination of features, battery life, weight, and price. The $800 TRS-80 Model 10...
