When Computing Got Personal cover art

When Computing Got Personal

A History of the Desktop Computer

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When Computing Got Personal

By: Matt Nicholson
Narrated by: Norman Gilligan
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About this listen

This is the story of how a handful of geeks and mavericks dragged the computer out of corporate back rooms and laboratories and into our living rooms and offices. It is a tale not only of extraordinary innovation and vision but also of cunning business deals, boardroom tantrums and acrimonious lawsuits.

Here you will find some of the most intelligent and eccentric people you could hope to meet, including wide-eyed hippies, subversive students, computer nerds, entrepreneurs, hackers, crackers and financial backers. Some lost out and some became millionaires, but all played a part in transforming our world.

©2014 Matt Nicholson (P)2015 Matt Nicholson History History & Culture United States Software Business Computer Security Programming Software Development Geeky Artificial Intelligence Innovation Hacking Computer History

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Critic reviews

"I have read numerous books on the history of personal computing and rate this one highly." (Tim Anderson, ITWriting)
"I enjoyed this book; it has obviously been extremely well researched, and is well written and takes a coherent route through the history." (Kay Ewbank, I Programmer)
"Matt Nicholson ... was in a position to observe all this first-hand." (Wendy M Grossman, ZDNet)
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this is a great story which is wide-ranging. furthermore it covers everything from the invention of the computer to the personal computer in the 80s and the internet as well. however there is not that much analysis in the story it is mainly just reporting on the information. furthermore there are a few references but not that many mentions of individual articles or books, it would be good to see those mentioned. nevertheless this is a really good book and I would recommend it for anyone interested in the field. furthermore even if you have all knowledge already from reading other books I would definitely read this as the topic is so wide-ranging. however you might not like the number of times that however is mentioned. it is not just however it is furthermore, nevertheless and therefore. I do not understand how the narrator did not actually pick up on this. these could have easily been removed during the production. the delivery is a bit deadpan, like reading the news on the BBC. furthermore I think it could have done with a friendly/conversational writing style. as you can see from this review it becomes annoying having so many linking eyes. the author needs a thesaurus - or better still learn to write in an engaging way.

fantastic, however... however.

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The narrator ruined this book. He ignores all punctuation and inserts unnecessary monotonous pauses in random places, the result of which is a torturous listening experience.

Opting to read the paper copy instead.

Terrible narrator

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I find the book very comprehensive, it covered all of the different computers I've ever owned from the 80s till modern day. enjoyed listening to it. highly recommended!

great

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Fantastic summary of the "personal" computer from the DEC minis, Apple I, II and Mac, IBM PC and clones, Speccy and Acorn/BBC. Rightly ends with the rise of the smartphone and tablets.
Basically Gates and Jobs/Wozniak decisions back in the 70s and on going into the 80s defined the products we use today.

Great short history of the PC and Mac

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Really enjoyed this and learning more about where personal computers came from. For me it was an easy listen and I will likely listen to it again.

Loved it thank you.

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it's always tough to get the facts right from audio books, so I'll have to lien to it a few more times. but i really enjoyed it. fit done things there was a bit of a walk down memory lane.

I really found the story interesting

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I grew up in the 80s and 90s and was in a position to use and play with a lot of PC and Mac hardware so this brings back lots of memories. Great book, great read and not at all dry which you might expect from the subject matter.

Such a great book, brings back memories.

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Interesting information, well narrated. Better than the sample suggests. I would recommend purchasing this book.

Great Overview of PC History

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Much of the story in this book has been covered in even greater detail elsewhere, especially the stories of Steve Jobs/Apple and Bill Gates/Microsoft. However, I've never encountered a book where the British contribution has been covered in reasonable detail. Nicholson puts this straight with his coverage of Clive Sinclair with the ZX80/81/Spectrum, the BBC Micro, and Amstrad's cheap PCs.

There was one serious omission though : no mention at all of the Acorn Archimedes series, all the more surprising when he does discuss RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Chip) architecture, and the Archimedes was the first home computer to feature it. What's more, the Archimedes introduced the world to the ARM chip, which is the heart of the majority of mobile devices today.

The narration was ok I suppose, though I did fall asleep a few times. I guess it's hard to sound enthusiastic and excited when talking about such prosaic technical things.

On the whole this is a useful overview of the emergence of the home computer, and though it strays at times into over-detailed descriptions of the technical side of things, it's good to get the story of what happened on both sides of the Atlantic rather than simply the Stateside view.

Good for Brits

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Narrator fine, if a little inexpressive. The first and last hour or two are crisply written and engaging. The rest of the book seems to get lost in rabbit holes of detail and the general sense of purpose gets rather lost. The result is that I simply tuned out for most of it. The Apple/Microsoft feud provides some welcome familiar context but restricts the battle to the 80s-early 00s.

Narrative arc secondary to detail

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