Re: What's to become of the Apple II?

["Charles P. Hobbs" <transit@primenet.com>]

Earle F. Philhower, III wrote:
> 
> It's a pity that kids today aren't going to have the opportunity that I had
> just ten years ago, growing up in an age of $200 computers that you could
> actually _do_ something with. 

Apples were never that cheap (they were around $1000 for a complete
system in '85 or so). However the prices of other 8-bitters (Atari,
Commodore, TI) fell like a rock during that time period.

[...]
 
> Surplus PCs could actually be a good programming/hacking opportunity, except
> for one thing:  you can't view the output on a TV!  Nobody is going to buy a
> $100 386 based computer, only to spend $250 on a dinky 14" monitor for it!
> 
I've seen perfectly good monitors thrown out too, so that's not so
much of a problem anymore. Hell, at work, we're scrapping perfectly
good VGA cards. (Reason--you can only get 16 colors out of them in
Windows).