Date   : Thu, 08 Oct 2009 10:05:57 +0100
From   : tim.matthews@... (Tim Matthews)
Subject: Electric Dreams last night.

 > Couldn't believe the stuff being spouted by the Sinclair 
> advocate (god, where did they find him!) about Beeb titles 
> like "fun with geography" or whatever. Um, Elite? Chuckie 
> Egg? Perhaps one of the first Office Suites ever put together 
> for a home computer??? Clueless!

Or why not just have the Beeb showing Manic Miner too!?
  
> Why was the Speccy so small? Didn't Sinclair have a larger 
> one with built-in tape and joystick? My memory is really 

No interconnectivity or expandability or usability of the Beeb.
The bigger one you're thinking of came years later.

> fuzzy here, I only remember a gaudy coloured keyboard on a 
> black machine, and a tendency to spit lines of coloured 
> garbage onto the screen, which I believe is a mostly-Spectrum 
> trait...?

That was the loading sequence. in the border around the screen. Not
quite sure if it was intentional but ISTR the ZX81 did something
similar.
I always thought perhaps it was a visiable reminder that everything was
ok.

> A good amount of '80s tech WAS crap! Do you remember those 
> big headphone-radio things? A radio receiver on one ear and 
> the batteries on the other? Do you remember the Oric-1? (I 
> have one! keyboard is icky)

AAARGH!! I hate this kinda statement. Today's technology will be crap in
30 years time.

> > I think their claims that modern technology can just be 
> plugged in and 
> > work was also very dubious  - I think many people still 
> have a lot of 
> > difficulties setting up a new TV, connecting up a new DVD 
> player (or 
> > games console, or set-top box),
> 
> Never had a problem with any of that, even wired my own SCART 
> leads for in-and-out because cheap-crap British VCRs usually 
> only have one SCART.

And trying to ram a Betamax tape into a VHS player doesn't help! 
but where did that Betamax tape come from in the first place??
The camera was a JVC VHS camera, wasn't it?

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