Macintosh News from 25 Years Ago: Computer Warehouse deals and thoughts on backing up data
Published: Thursday, 31st January 2019
Well, January has absolutely flown by so I figured I’d mark the passing of the first month of 2019 by taking another look back to 25 years ago via the pages of the January 1994 issue of The Mac magazine.
I’ve always had a fascination with the cost of computing way-back-when and once made a point of going through old catalogues and totting up the early-90s value of my Apple collection; the few systems I had up and running on my desk with all their peripherals and upgrades would have cost well upwards of 100 grand when new! So my eye was drawn this morning to a double-page Computer Warehouse advert adorning the opening spread of the magazine.
This is actually a relatively visually-restrained layout for an early/mid-90s computer vendor; take a look at this MacWarehouse catalogue I scanned a while ago to see the typical acid trip design approach popular in that era. And it’s not too busy with info, either, mainly focussing on bundle deals for a few consumer-level Macs. I have a real soft spot for the LCIII (I have a heavily expanded LCIII+ as my main System 7 machine) and am quite pleased to see it featured prominently in this ad, and at a good price too of just £549 for the base system (albeit plus VAT, and in early-90s money). At some point about a year later than this, I remember my mum and dad spending nearly three grand on a terrible Windows computer, with the benefit of hindsight I do think we’d have been much better off with one of these deals, the LC475 above would have made a great family computer for us. Never mind!
Headline product on the ad is the PowerBook Duo 270c, and at £2000 plus VAT, a serious outlay for a serious machine. I’ve never actually handled one of these (I’ve never had much interest in pre-iBook Apple laptops for some reason) but I know that they are well-regarded and sought after by some collectors.
The other item of note is an article ruminating on back-up solutions; Shaken But Not Stored!
It’s a neat little informative piece, laying out the issue of data loss and the need to get serious about backing up your data at regular intervals. It goes on to detail the options available to folk in 1994; floppy disks; hard disk cartridges (SyQuest carts, for example); MO drives; DAT; and, most interestingly, the new-fangled recordable CD-ROM!
Amazing to see that CD burners cost up to £7K! And if you couldn’t afford that, well you *might* be able to afford £120 per CD to get someone else to do it for you… Ye Gods! We don’t know we’re born, we really don’t!
I’ve placed high-resolution scans of the Computer Warehouse ad and the back-ups article in the Internet Archive, please do go and take a look.
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Love your site design! 🙂 I remember those days. The LC was quite OK price wise.