Customer Reviews

Digital Retro: The Evolution and Design of the Personal Computer

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The photos are the star of this book, and it's worth it for them. They're clear high resolution photos, and usually there are closeups of the interesting parts of the systems. There are errors, though: an Apple ][+ photo is used instead of an original Apple ][, for instance. Also, the description of how a 6510 differs from a 6502 is incorrect.

Much like AppleDesign, enjoy the photos but don't trust the text.

"Digital retro" is a very good book of pictures printed in very good paper. It contains lots of high-quality photos of lots of computers, and everything is cleanly arranged. The author has chosen the most significant computers, and I have to say he has done a good work.

That said, I find a great lack of text. For each computer or company, you will only find three or four facts, which is scarce information for not-so-cheap book. You will find a lot more information in Freiberger & Swaine's "Fire in the Valley: The Making-Of of the Personal Computer".

This book definitely remembers me of Christian Wurster's "Computers: An Illustrated History" (Taschen), Michael Nadeau's "Collectible Microcomputers" (Schiffer) or (the Sinclair-centric) Enrico Tedeschi's "Sinclair Archeology" (Hover).

I would recommend you to buy "Digital retro", "Colletible Microcomputers" or "Computers: An Illustrated History" and "Fire in the Valley", and read both side-by-side.

It's riddled with errors and shows every sign of having been copied from websites or other sources that were not authoritative themselves. All sorts of rumors mixed in with fact, and no effort to distinguish between them. Also, curiously, though the book contains lovely photographs of all the machines it discusses, Laing never shows any of them turned on or running software. A missed chance, I think.

There are a lot of great photos of many early personal computers. Also included are some specs and history on each machine.

I was not sure why they were including Nintendo and other console game machines in a book about "The Evolution and Design of the Personal Computer" though..

On pages 11 and 13 the author repeatedly refers to "Practical Electronics" instead of the correct "Popular Mechanics" as the magazine that introduced the ALTAIR on its cover in 1975. They even italisize the error in each instance, d'oh. :)

I still enjoyed the book though.

Perfect pictures of your favourite microcomputers of the eighties. Apple II, ZX80, Spectrum, Amstrad, even the NeXT Cube are here, beautifully photographed both with clear orthogonal views as well as with a three-quarter view. These are the pictures of these machines that you wanted to see. You can clearly see all of the case, including the underside if I/O ports exist there. The text is interesting enough though in some cases the precise machine photographed might not be the exact machine described. (Though the Amiga 500 is clearly labelled as such so there is no dishonesty here.)

Since I bought this book everyone who has viewed is has practically drooled over it. Throw away your National Geographics and your art books - *this* is the book you need to have on your coffee table!

My only complaint is that ink from some pages seems to be making slight marks on the opposing pages. But it's not a big deal.

Take a visual stroll through the early days of personal computing, from 1975's seminal MITS Altair to 1988's failed NeXT cube, before the market bifurcated between Mac and Windows users. This 192-page paperback examines 40 classic computers of yesteryear, each depicted from all sides with full-color photography and annotated with original specifications and pricing. Laing's text also reveals many juicy tidbits about the companies and personalities that dominated the industry in its infancy. Given the author's British background, the coverage of many obscure models from the UK is to be expected, though they may not be appreciated by American audiences. I found the inclusion of video game systems a curious choice, too. My only major criticism is that the text accompanying the spendid photos is unnecessarily small and difficult to read.

A pretty good chronology of the eveolution of the home computer in the 70's and 80's. Reading a book like this takes you back to the days of BASIC and tape loading programs.

Although I found it a little UK-centric, with plenty of information on the Sinclair and Acorn, Laing did manage to include a wide range of different models and has made the book as almost a handbook with facts about each of the major models.

I thought it was a little light in terms of content but I can understand that if you were to write a book about the evolution of computers, let alone from the 70's and 80's you would have to prepare an undertaking the size of Brittanica!

This book should inspire you to want to read more with good references to websites and should take you back to remind you of the good old days before Big Blue and Mr Gates.

I think what I liked best about this book was that it (re) exposed me to old friends I had. But besides that it also exposed me to potential friends I never knew about. The history of both USA and UK pre-PC-dominant computing is a tangled web, and Gordon does a _great job_ of ferreting out the fun "insider" stories about each of the old machines.

Yes, this book really IS on my coffee table, and, any geeky guest who comes over is simply rapt in looking at the beautiful pictures. In all, this is great book for those who love "ye olden days" of computing. My only wish for the book was that the photographer took pictures of (at least some) of the computers ON. Other than that, it's a fun book and well worth it.

PS: My cover image is different than what is displayed here on Amazon.

Let us go back a few years. Thumbing through these pages will give some of you a surge of nostalgia for your mislaid youth. Laing documents in word and images a vanished world of mostly dead architectures and companies, that flourished before the rise of Wintel.

He has gone to some lengths to show us the most popular machines of their times. Like the MITS Altair 8800, widely considered the first personal computer. Of course, the Apple II is included in the book. And who can forget the Trash 80? Or the luggable Osborne? The latter was called portable. But luggable was thought to be the better term.

Game machines like the Ataris and Nintendo are also in the book. Here, undoubtedly, many of you did indeed squander days and weeks (months?), when you should have been swotting.

The photos are very cleanly done. Each looks like a shot taken when the machines were new.

Some people are quick to point out some of the facts & tidbits this book may hove not fully verified but if you simply want a good short read about a certain infamous computer and want lush high quality, full page pictures of that computer, this is the book for you. I especially like the fact that the more important computers (ex: Commodore 64) get extended attention in the form of 4 or 5 pages with even more photos, but generally speaking, most computers are a 2 page layout, photo on the right, history on the right.

It's a very light read, the perfect coffee table book for the nerd in you.