ly in the business/secretarial world. The ability to use Word Perfect became an essential skill for most secretaries, and remained so until the early 90's and the introduction of Microsoft Windows. A graphical user interface version of Word Perfect was introduced for Windows, along with versions for the Macintosh and the Amiga (and the Atari ST ?), but Microsoft Word managed to grab most of the GUI word processing market.The IBM PC/ATBuilding on the strength of the PC (1981) and PC/XT (1983), the PC/AT was a major increase in performance and storage capacity. Although it looked like the original PC, Intel's fast 80286 processor running at 6 MHz, combined with 16-bit busses, made the AT several times faster than the original PC. AT systems also came with much more RAM, usually 512 or 640 Kb, and new high-density 1.2 Mb floppy disk drives.Hard disks of up to 20 Mb became available, and you could even install two if you wanted. New 16-bit expansion slots allowed for faster expansion cards but maintained backward compatibility with the old 8-bit cards. The hardware changes meant a new version of DOS (the dreaded 3.0).The price for an AT with 512 Kb of RAM, a serial/parallel adapter, a high-density floppy drive, and a 20 Mb hard disk was over $5000, but at the time this was less than everyone expected.The Commodore AmigaIn 1985 the Amiga introduced the world to multimedia. The talented engineers who designed the Amiga (and it wasn't Commodore) happened to hit on a basic configuration that all personal computers would eventually move towards. Unfortunately, the Amiga was so far ahead of its time that almost nobody - including Commodore - really understood what it was. Today it is obvious that the Amiga was the first multimedia computer, but in those days it was viewed largely as a games machine because few people grasped the importance of advanced graphics and sound combined with a multitasking operating system with a graphical user interface...
