Alex Burns
ALTHOUGH this image may look prehistoric to the modern eye, when it was taken in 1987 it would have captured what was then the cutting edge of technology. In offering both personal and business computers, this Dixons' store was providing an insight into the type of technology we have all come to rely on.
Offering monitors, hard drives and keyboards as a "complete computer package" was a relatively new phenomenon, as people had previously been using TVs to act as computer monitors.
The computers are advertised as featuring "word processing", a "data base" and even "graphics" which are an absolute given for even the most basic of models in 2017.
To get a 28MB hard drive, the offer advertised in this Dixons' store was a colour processor that would set you back £1299. By way of comparison, 28MB (the entire capacity of the model from 1987) would today hold a mere five minutes of video or 28 digital pictures. And by paying the same price of £1299, in 2017 you would get a top of the range MacBook, with a hard drive nearly three hundred times greater than that offered 30 years ago. The employee in the picture doesn’t appear to have many customers keen to get a slice of the latest technology – a great contrast to the queues that snake round stores nowadays when the latest smartphones are released.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here