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When Computing Got Personal

A History of the Desktop Computer

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When Computing Got Personal

By: Matt Nicholson
Narrated by: Norman Gilligan
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About this listen

This is the story of how a handful of geeks and mavericks dragged the computer out of corporate back rooms and laboratories and into our living rooms and offices. It is a tale not only of extraordinary innovation and vision but also of cunning business deals, boardroom tantrums and acrimonious lawsuits.

Here you will find some of the most intelligent and eccentric people you could hope to meet, including wide-eyed hippies, subversive students, computer nerds, entrepreneurs, hackers, crackers and financial backers. Some lost out and some became millionaires, but all played a part in transforming our world.

©2014 Matt Nicholson (P)2015 Matt Nicholson History History & Culture Technology Software Business Computer Security Programming Software Development Geeky Artificial Intelligence Innovation Hacking Management Computer Science Computer History

Critic reviews

"I have read numerous books on the history of personal computing and rate this one highly." (Tim Anderson, ITWriting)
"I enjoyed this book; it has obviously been extremely well researched, and is well written and takes a coherent route through the history." (Kay Ewbank, I Programmer)
"Matt Nicholson ... was in a position to observe all this first-hand." (Wendy M Grossman, ZDNet)
All stars
Most relevant
Really enjoyed this and learning more about where personal computers came from. For me it was an easy listen and I will likely listen to it again.

Loved it thank you.

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it's always tough to get the facts right from audio books, so I'll have to lien to it a few more times. but i really enjoyed it. fit done things there was a bit of a walk down memory lane.

I really found the story interesting

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Interesting information, well narrated. Better than the sample suggests. I would recommend purchasing this book.

Great Overview of PC History

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I was looking for book on this topic for quite some time. This book exceeded my expectations as to really well balance between technical detail and commercial impact. I believe this book would definitely warrants new editions with adding some of the latest developments that happened years after publication such as AI.

Outstanding work

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The narrator ruined this book. He ignores all punctuation and inserts unnecessary monotonous pauses in random places, the result of which is a torturous listening experience.

Opting to read the paper copy instead.

Terrible narrator

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