I Owe My Life to the Commodore 64
If personal computers are for everybody, how come they’re priced for nobody?
Enjoy this article by Sung J. Woo . It may focus on the Commodore 64, but I think it applies to most of us that were around in the 80s. — Paul
(If you prefer, you can also listen to the audio version .)
The slogan was on the back page of Compute! , a magazine I often bought from the video game store of the strip mall where my parents operated a gift shop . The advert displayed a trio of competing personal computers on the top half of the page, the Apple IIe, the Tandy TRS-80 III, and the IBM PC, the cost of each machine near a thousand dollars or well above it. The bottom half starred a family of three staring at a computer monitor showing the planet Saturn: mother on the left, father on the right, and the son in the middle with his fingers over the brownie-brown keyboard. “The Commodore 64. Under $600,” the final lines of the ad read. “You can’t buy a better computer at twice the price.”
I sighed, heavily. Six hundred was cheaper than a grand, but it was still six hundred. As a twelve-year-old boy who got paid five bucks a day for helping out the family business, it might as well have been a million dollars.
A month later, I bought the October 1983 issue. Same exact ad on the back, except one enormous difference: “The Commodore 64. Under $300.” Two months later, it dropped under two hundred, an eye-catching $199, at our neighborhood Toys R Us, just in time for Christmas.