Computer Products That Vanished: Still Can Be Found

There are certain such computer products which refused to expire with the passage of time and advent of new technological items. Though the fresher versions and newer technologies make people forget the older products, but these few have not been eliminated off the world. They are still here, only not in front of our eyes. We can still find them if we want.

Hayes Modems:

Dennis Hayes invented these dial up modems in 1970, which were excellent enough that their standard is still used in dial up modems these days. For many years, Hayes ruled the dial up modem market. The fall of Hayes’ company was not due to the fall of dialup modems. The company’s downfall was a consequence of stubborn behavior regarding high prices even when the market held much cheaper option. This led to its liquidation in 1999. Zoom Telephonics bought Hayes’ company in 1999. Zoom still makes few Hayes labeled modems.

MiniDisk:

Introduced by Sony in 1992, this unfortunate product didn’t gain much fame in the world except in Asia. It contained 80 minute of music, and could combine best quality CDs and cassette tapes into one high class portable package. Very soon after its arrival in the market, it had to compete hard with digital downloads. Obviously, its doom caught it soon. But, it is still there. Sony launched an improved version Hi-MD in 2004, of which only one device can presently be found. As soon as journalists and musicians lose interest in the device, we will have difficulty finding it again.

Monochrome Displays:

These black and white CRTs were widely used in 70s and 80s. They worked pretty well, despite the fact that MAC didn’t support them and few DOS applications demanded color display. In 1990s, there was a wide demand of color displays, as for gaming and media playing it was necessary. This is why, such displays were soon extinct.

Monochrome displays are still out there in the market. Dell has stocked many. Though you might not need one; but those who want an unspectacular cash registering device or for similar usage can find one easily.

Hercules:

In 1982, a popular line of graphics cards was launched by IBM for IBM PCs and compatibles. Those days, it was used as a synonym for graphics; undoubtedly the text was of very high quality. Its demand decreased gradually when fancy color graphics began intruding the market. In 1998, it was bought out by ELSA; which further sold it out to Guillemot that was a French company. Guillemot went on with production of graphic cards under Hercules name till 2004.

We can yet find Hercules name in many products; strangely those products have nothing to do with graphic cards, e.g. notebooks, Wi-Fi, sound cards, speakers etc.

Personal Digital Assistants:

These pocket size computing devices were launched in early 90s. Pioneers were Apple, Casio, Palm and Compaq. With the arrival of smartphones, demand of PDAs decreased until it died out. These days, no brand lunches new PDAs, though the iPod Touch can be counted among PDAs. HP still sells out the iPaq line. Also, Amazon has Palm PDAs in stock still, thus we can say that they have not died out completely.

Packard Bell:

In the early 90s, this PC manufacturer dominated the retail home PC market. It faced doom because of its owner’s wrong business decisions. The parts of these PCs were cheap and of low quality. Compaq came into business, and destroyed Packard Bell’s business completely. Though the brand name vanished from US in 2000; it never died out in Europe. Now, it is a part of Acer, and makes laptops, desktops, displays, mp3 players etc.

Amiga:

Home PC pioneer Commodore introduced Amiga in 1985; which was a line of PCs. Even in those days, these PCs delivered great quality of multimedia and multitasking. In 1994, Commodore declared bankruptcy and stopped manufacturing PCs. These days, the owner company is named Amiga Inc. one can even buy an Amiga tip calculator from stores.

Floppy Disks:

Floppy disks were a form of removable portable data storage devices. It was introduced in 70s, and was used as an alternative of audio cassettes. Zip disks, CDs, DVDs, internet downloading and USB flash drives replaced the floppy drives, and they soon were out of demand.

Even then, the device hasn’t vanished yet. You can get one if you want still form the stores out there; even an old PC in your home will be having the floppy drive at the front side. It has gone very cheap now, but no one would want one these days when one can buy a USB flash drive with memory in GBs.

These few products vanished from the technology world due to less demand and other reasons, but they have not disappeared from the real world. If one desires to get them, they still can be acquired from general or specific marketplaces.

Written by “Seemab”

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Tags: computer products, data storage devices, dialup modems, graphics cards, iPod touch, monochrome displays, pioneers