Vintage Technology Collector

Demo video program promoting the debut of the Commodore 64 computer system, set to various short holiday carols with animation. At the end comes the sale pitch, promoting it's whopping 64 kilobytes of RAM, eye-blazing 16 colors, and all for the amazingly low price of just under $600.

TechRepublic reports: "It's not much to look at--the overriding impression is of several mangled paper clips clumsily soldered onto some chunky scrap metal--but really, the whole of modern digital life stems from it. This was the very first transistor, invented at Bell Labs in December 1947. Known as a point contact transistor, it was first manufactured commercially a few years later, ironically enough, in a textbook example of a Rust Belt locale: Allentown, Pa." Check out this TechRepublic photo gallery, it chronicles some of the history of the transistor.

Yahoo! News reports: "Meet the titans of tech. Here are some of the extraordinary individuals who have changed the world through the power of the computer. From Bill Gates to Steve Jobs to the Google Guys and the founders of Napster and eBay, '60 Minutes' has covered the high-tech revolution from DOS to the iPhone." These are very short interview with some technology luminaries, billionaires, and a few others. I would have liked the clips better if they were longer. Although, I did learn a few things by watching them.

PC World reports: "thinking about all the things we miss about the early days of computing. This week, we've woken up. Let's face it: Lots of things back then sucked. At the risk of sounding like crotchety grandfathers, we'll say it: 'These kids today have it soft, dag nab it.' If you were born after the first Star Wars movie, you might not be aware of just how cushy your computing life is. For proof, we offer five examples."

CNET News.com reports: "I don't want to date myself, but when I was in high school, one of the things I remember was that, among the geeks like myself who hung out in the computer lab, a bit of a culture war was under way. No, it wasn't Macs versus Windows. But Apple was a player in this battle. In fact, it was the Commodore 64 versus the Apple IIe, and while the school had a collection of Apples in the lab that all of us had to use, those of us who had C64s felt like we we owned the superior computer." I was very interested in the part of the article that referenced the culture war that existed between the Commodore 64 and the Apple II users. It was also interesting to see that Jack Tramiel and Steve Wozniak denied that this culture war ever existed. I personally was a fan of the Apple II.