Be Excellent To Each Other

A bit of light holiday reading for me a few weeks back:



Why do you want to read a book about a beardy bloke you don't like very much?

Well simply it's one of the best insights into the British home computer market of the 1980's you'll ever read. 12 pages on the takeover of Sinclair with quotes from Uncle Clive himself? The full story of how the CPC came to be? The abandoned colour PCW that would have been CPC compatible? It's filled with this stuff. Yes the book has loads about stockbrokers, floatations, etc, but chapters on the CPC, PCW and Sinclair takeover all stand out as genuinely enlightening.

Despite being an unofficial biography, it's been done with the full corporation of Sugar and Amstrad. The author gets some rather juicy quotes from the beardy one. Sugar on the collapse of the market Xmas '84 that severely damaged Sinclair and Acorn:



And on the situation prior to the Sinclair takeover:



It's all there writ in black and white. Ignore all the boring business staff and just focus in on the Speccy and CPC stuff. Loads of quotes from the people who worked there and even Sir Clive himself. Yes you might only end up reading 25% of the book, but you'll come away enlightened.

The book ends in early 1990 (the author was killed working as a journalist during the Gulf war) so there's no CPC Plus or Em@ilers which is a bit disappointing. The net result is the book doesn't actually feel like it's finished.

The cost of this retro orgy? Just a penny + postage. I spoil you!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/0330319000/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&condition=used

That does sound quite interesting but as you say the vast majority of the book will be somewhat dull. Still, for a penny plus postage can't go too far wrong I suppose.

It's odd to think that places such as Boots used to sell computers and computer games, I remember the Boots in Chelmsford had a proper computer section and shelves full of games, it'd just be so incongruous these days.

Also not nice to see that major UK retailers were actively trying to stamp a company such as Sinclair into the ground to save a few quid, he actually uses the word 'raping', which is very strong language.

Yeah Bexleyheath Boots used to do the same, they had demo pods out at Christmas so you could play Sonic the Hedgehog on the Megadrive, I even ended up buying Bubble Bobble for NES with christmas money (one of my favouritest games ever).