TOM WALKER wrote in a message to ROY J. TELLASON:

RJT>I know of no manufacturer that tried to lock anybody in to anything,  nor
RJT>software publisher -- why would they try and limit their marketplace
RJT>like that?

TW> TRy thinking DEC and soem of the bib names in CP/M of that day. We
TW> have then at the VA Medical Center when I wroked there and nothing
TW> was cross aompatable.

Nothing was,  in those days -- in only some respects.  Particularly the
screen control codes and floppy disk formats I mentioned.

TW> Adn it was more then jsut the Floppy Formatting. But becaue of that 
TW> interchange of documents was also a nightmare.

Between different programs?  That hasn't changed.  An awful lot of folks
out there these days seem to think that "word" is a more or less
universal format, for example.

TW> Becaue you need to swap bacicly "Text" only documenting and 
TW> then reformat it ion the orther machine. That did go quickly as  
TW> the bacic document was already trped. In defence of the way though
TW> there was very little document interchanging electronicly. It was  
TW> mostly paper copies.

That hasn't changed much either,  the "paperless office" has been
talked about for decades now,  and shows no signs of getting any closer.

TW> NOW the Anesthesia Department chose MAC's as their computers and 
TW> they were the envy of others with their Apple Talk network(OR 
TW> whatever it was called in those days)

Yeah,  Apple made it a point to have their machines talk to each other, 
but it doesn't do you a whole lot of good when some of the machines you
want to talk to aren't apple...

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