Commodore Book

[Llamaman]

Got my copy today, along with another storming book "Digital Retro" (Another awsome book detailing almost every home computer of the golden era, Oric, Aquarius, Cpc464.. anyone?)

Only just started reading them but already its proving to be amazing. what it must have been like to be thoes guys developing all that technology.. And then have it all be nigh-on forgotten about and to get virtually written out of the history books...

Well, Mr Jobs , Mr Gates , etc....

We wont forget and we know what really happend.

[Harrison]

Glad you are enjoying the books.

It is so true. Apple and M$ are living off of the ideas of others who got swallowed up and forgotten along the way.

[v85rawdeal]

You could say, although I expect most of you wouldn't...

A spoonful of Sugar helps the Microsoft go down...

[Tiago]

Hi guys,

i will make the same question again, nobody answer last time:

So do you think it will be easy for me to read it in english? I dont have it here in Portugal.
In the past i read about 4 or 5 books in English, but they where adventure or novels, with no difficult language with no difficult terms. Does this book have difficult tecnical terms in english?

[Teho]

Well, there are technical terms in it of course since a large part of it is dealing with computer production and specifications. I am norwegian and personally I had no trouble reading it. But I have been reading books in english on a regular basis for over ten years, so it may be that it was easier for me than it is for you. I don't know. I can't really say if the technincal terms are difficult to understand or not. A technical term is a technical term, either you understand it or you don't. But many technical terms are pretty universal across the languages, ie the words are either the same or very similar. At least it's that way with a lot of technical terms in norwegian. So basically, I think if you allready know most of the technical terms in your own language, you should for the most part be fine with reading it in english.

[Tiago]

Thanks Teho,
yes i think a lot of technical terms are universal, many of them inPortuguese manuals are written in the same way.

Lets see if i can read it correctly.

In amigakit.com it cost 22.32 plus +/- 7shipping to PT (pounds)
in ebay i found it at 13.13 plus 4.80 shipping (punds) at "buy it now"

in amazon it has similar price. Amigakit sometimes is a bit expensive...
13 to 22... more 9 pounds ...

[Harrison]

Amazon normally have good prices and I know others here order books from the UK Amazon store. Teho definitely does.

[Cortona]

I read 'On The Edge' earlier this year, then picked it up again recently to just dip into it, but ended up reading the whole book again! It really is worth reading if you ever had a Commodore computer or got interested more recently via emulation.

Perversely, I discovered it from a (very positive) review on an Apple blog, which just goes to show that not all Apple fanatics are history re-writing vacuous wannabies.

Even more perversly, if you relished the lurid business shennanigans exposed in 'On The Edge', you might well enjoy 'iCon'* - a similar book on Steve Jobs. It's been a couple of years since I read it but I think there are a few similarities between the way Jobs and Tramiel did business.

* 'iCon, The Second Biggest Comeback in Business History', to give it it's full title. (It's something like that anyway!) See what they did with iCon? Now that's clever...

[StuKeith]

Just finished reading the book! AMAZING!!! I read the whole 596 (Or so) pages in under a week!

I did have a couple of issues though.

1)I somethings found it hard to know who was talking, or who was being talked about.

2)Repeting. Sometimes things were said a few times throughout the book.

Other than that it was great. I was astonished to read how 1 person brought down 2 companies with little help from others. and how after JT left it all went pair shapped!

I also found it Ironic that commodore invented such good ideas, chucked them aside, and they went on to make money they missed out on.

(C= started up AOL! ("QLink"))

[mcostanza]

I was going to order this on Amazon the other day but i noticed that a new edition is going to be available and is expected to ship Feb 2010. Anyone have any idea's on what is gong to be added to the new edition? The book description on Amazon did not say.

Regards,
MC

One of my presents my wife got me at Christmas was the Commodore book "On the Edge : The spectacular rise and fall of Commodore"

Only just started reading it but its a great read for us computer geeks lol....anyone else here read it? It definitely is a recommended read for sure.