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Dearly Departed — Companies and Products That Didn't Make It

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the down-for-the-count dept.

Esther Schindler writes "Some products just didn't deserve to die. But they did, because the companies made bad business decisions. Dearly Departed, revisits several favorites — from minicomputers to software utilities — and mourns the best and brightest that died an untimely death. What companies or products would you add? Which of them deserved to go?"

4 of 462 comments (clear)

  1. quick summary by call+-151 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Quick list for those who don't care to click through one per page for 19 pages:

    DEC, Tandem, Apollo, Borland, Amiga, Commodore, Ashton-Tate, Fox, Central Point Software, Quarterdeck, Gould, Infocom, Sequent, Poquet,
    Taligent, Word Perfect, Lotus, and Compuserve are the "dearly departed"

    I can't comment much on the PC-heavy end of the list, but DEC stands out to me as the one
    which least deserved to die. DEC Western Research Lab was a fantastic place with a great deal of innovation and freedom, and
    watching it shrivel and die was painful.

    --
    It's psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I'll get a saw.
    1. Re:quick summary by frdmfghtr · · Score: 5, Informative

      Or try reading the printable version.

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      Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
    2. Re:quick summary by rs79 · · Score: 5, Informative

      "Forgive me, but just about every PC with VGA or better had better graphics than the Amiga 1000"

      In the day, that is when the Amiga first came out, your PC graphics choices were CGA or the then brand new EGA that gave you 16 colors.

      IBM did have a PGC ("Professional graphics controller") that would do 640x480 by 24 but. It was $2500 and was two cards. I saw exactly one in the wild.

      It was a few years before VGA came out. In the day the Amiga was the best bang for your graphics buck. Never mind the ability to sync to NTSC explained elsewhere here. And the first VGA's were no screaming hell. It took PC's a number of years to catch up.

      To this day no computer can pull a window from background to foreground as fast at the Amiga could then.

      --
      Need Mercedes parts ?
  2. PROTIP: How to avoid 20 pages of click-through ads by brouski · · Score: 5, Informative

    Find the "Printable Version" button on the first page. Condenses everything into one page.

    Most of these "news" sites have one.

    --
    Proud member of the American Non Sequitur Society. We might not make much sense, but boy do we love pizza!