Best Old Commercials

Pen and paper were so “out” in the 1980’s.  So were the cumbersome tasks and noice of the typewriter, now replaced by the high-tech Video Writer from Magnavox!  This Video Writer featured a full QWERTY keyboard, an orangey-black pint-sized monitor, disc slot, and a printer on top to print out your finished masterpiece.

My main beef with this type of peripheral is that when something breaks, the whole thing stops serving its purpose.  Let’s say the printer breaks, which they are notoriously popular for doing.  The screen goes black – good luck replacing it since you can’t just buy a new screen, your whole video writer machine is freaking connected to everything else.

I suppose you put the file to disc and open it to print on your buddy’s computer.  OH WAIT!  PC’s were horribly incompatible in the 1980’s and 1990’s, with every hardware and software company is clamouring to make their way the “standard”.  Since everyone else’s standards were crap, you had to use THEIR computer to get it to do anything you wanted it to do.

It looks like in the end the consumers demanded more from their technology than just Video Writing.  There’s probably a Steve Ballmer commercial for that somewhere…