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1983: Bill Gates, Compaq+ and some new thing called “Windows”
Back in 1983, I worked in Digital’s UK PC Dealer Team, where I was the sole presales technical guy helping to grow Rainbow PC sales through the PC Dealer Channel. Around 120 independent dealers, many of whom had a background in selling Commodore, Apple and miscellaneous CP/M based machines to consumers and businesses. As the second largest computer manufacturer in the world, everyone (including ourselves) expected the PC market to become an IBM vs DEC battle ground.
We had seen the launch of the Apple Lisa, a machine that scared everybody. While most of the vendors saw the windowing system and thought Apple would eat us alive, consumers got equally scared of the $10,000 price tag. However, it set in train an arms race to provide an equivalent for other PC vendors.
The authors of Visicalc (the first and most popular spreadsheet) started engineering a Windowing system called “Visi-On”, another called Quarterdeck a system called “DesQ” that could work out of the box with existing applications, and there was a rumoured response on the way from Microsoft.
In May, we had a visit from Phil Sutcliffe of Microsoft and his CEO, young bloke called Bill Gates, who carried in a Compaq Plus (IBM compatible as large and heavy as a portable sewing machine) and set it up to give a demo to around 20 of us…
