

An Ode to Computer Shopper - hudibras
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/07/an-ode-to-em-computer-shopper-em/277713/

======
dsr_
Computer Shopper was the multi-vendor catalog for computers back when a dial-
up BBS was all the networking you could expect at home.

There were also articles, every now and then something interesting like
reviews of early PC UNIXen, scattered in with hardware roundups that often
took the form of "200 laser printers!" each with a 1 paragraph blurb.

If you were the sort of teenager who was saving up for a computer to take to
college - as I was - it provided endless opportunity to re-enter prices on
spreadsheets while sighing over the latest unaffordable super-PC sporting a
brand-new 80486DX-33 and 2 full megabytes of RAM.

~~~
reeses
In terms of "hours of 'entertainment' per dollar", the pre-ecommerce Computer
Shopper exceeded all other media, second only to going through the white pages
and making prank calls.

(There, I think I made enough "old person" references.)

~~~
ErikAugust
Let me fix this up a bit:

Making prank calls from your neighbor's phone line with a beige box, wishing
you had the money for a laptop with a built-in modem so you can use their line
to dial up to NetZero and telnet to some stuff.

~~~
reeses
You're not helping. We spelled it "Telenet" back then[1], and we used kermit
to get to it, but we mainly used it for UUCP.

My school was on BITNET, which really...bit. Laptops still required mains
power supply. They were just portable. :-)

I'm going to hang a bloody onion on my damned belt now.

[1] I'm joking. They're different things.

------
dfc
_" Computer Shopper was like Vogue or Vanity Fair for nerds. You read it for
the ads."_

Someone clearly has never opened up a Vanity Fair in his entire life.

~~~
larrys
Agree. Actually hard to believe that's not just a quick mistake given that
"Alexis Madrigal is a senior editor at The Atlantic".

~~~
dfc
I looked up the author's bio to check which pronoun to use and also did a
double take when I saw "senior editor at The Atlantic." I am hoping it is just
a case of pandering to the nerd stereotype. The only other explanation is that
Atlantic's online push has dramtically lowered the bar for quality.

I fondly remember going over each page of Computer Shopper before going to the
Computer Fair to price out a new 486. But I also remember subscribing to VF so
I could get my Christopher Hitchens fix.

~~~
Refefer
I think, perhaps, you should read some of his other articles before making a
judgement call on the Atlantic's quality or Alexis' qualifications.

[http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/when-t...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/when-
the-nerds-go-marching-in/265325/)

~~~
dfc
A decrease in quality was one of the possible explanations. The other was that
he is just pandering to the nerds. That is a great article, but it still does
not change the fact that I expect people in the publishing business to have a
more informed opinion than "people just read VF for the ads." However if you
want to make it a debate about the quality of Alexis' writings all I can say
is that he is no Christopher Hitchens or Michael Lewis.

------
ChuckMcM
I too liked Computer Shopper for both the ads and the articles. All of the
BASIC Stamp articles were quite the thorough treatise on the capabilities of
that small system.

But what I miss is the openness. I've got the databook from Western Digital
that let me write a BIOS for CP/M for the Cromemco series machines, it told me
everything I needed to know to exercise every feature of their chip. Today,
due to a combination of licensing and just sheer complexity issues such data
sheets have largely faded away. I've been playing around with some of the ST
Micro ARM chips and to really "get" them you have to have the ST Micro Data
sheet, the ARM Cortex-Mx TRM, and the ARM7-M TRM. That is a ton of information
about a chip with millions of transistors. Its just hard to put all of that
into an accessible space. Even the lowly Microchip PIC or ATmega parts have
fairly large datasheets associated with them compared to say the Z80 data
sheet.

The most annoying though are the interconnects. You could easily get all the
bus specs for the original IBM PC, but getting all the USB specs for a modern
one? Harder and harder.

I really dislike the pervasive sense that I, as a developer, need to pay some
tribute to the manufacturer before they will "allow" me to develop things with
their product. Its not a general case thing, Atmel is pretty good about
telling you anything you want to know for example, but every time I run into
it, it leaves a very bad taste in my mouth.

~~~
bane
> Even the lowly Microchip PIC or ATmega parts have fairly large datasheets
> associated with them compared to say the Z80 data sheet.

And oh what you could do with a Z80 or a 6502, a few kilobytes of RAM and a
couple support chips!

------
chrissnell
I miss the days of the 1" thick Computer Shopper. I remember lusting over ads
featuring 3,000 Mb hard drives that cost something like $2-3K each and
thinking "man...if I could only have one for my BBS". I remember the ZyXEL
modem ads and how happy I was when I finally got the U-1496+ for Christmas and
could start pulling my FidoNET mail down at 19,200 bps. Who could forget the
Viewsonic ads with the "simulated" screen image of the Gouldian finches and
thinking, "Damn...17" monitor...unreal!"

------
mgcross
Computer Shopper is still somewhat nostalgic for me, but I quickly lost
interest after discovering pricewatch.com:
[http://wayback.archive.org/web/19970209004411/http://www.pri...](http://wayback.archive.org/web/19970209004411/http://www.pricewatch.com/)
I was in my 20s, but pricing and building K6 or 300A machines with Voodoo2s or
FireGL cards for Unreal and Lightwave takes me back.

~~~
Cymen
Same experience for me -- I couldn't justify buying Computer Shopper when
pricewatch.com was far more timely. I did enjoy the column with Alice and Bob
and that kept me buying it for a little while longer.

~~~
D9u
PriceWatch was a late entry into the game. (1995)

------
dsr_
Oh, important point. "Computer Shopper" in the US is not even the same type of
thing as the same-named magazine in the UK. US: articles from Steven J
Vaughan-Nichols. UK: articles from Charles Stross. SJVN now reports on open-
source stuff for ZDnet, and Stross writes SF. Both are occasionally seen on
HN.

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area51org
I'd think of Byte, Creative Computing, or even early Wired as more of a Vanity
Fair for nerds than Computer Shopper.

~~~
reeses
Byte is a good comparison. There were ads and then there were ads hidden as
articles.

~~~
area51org
In the later years of Byte? In the early years ('70s, '80s) it wasn't really
like that (the way I recall, anyway!).

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triplesec
The guy's talking absolute hogwash about reading it for the ads. Yes, some of
them had nice stuff, but the there were a load of great columns and a young me
read most of them, learning a whole load. I still probably have a bunch of
paper clippings somewhere!

------
kimmel
If only someone had saved these for future generations :)
[https://archive.org/details/computer_shopper](https://archive.org/details/computer_shopper)

