On this day in 1985...

People still use printers? Last time I printed something, it was a boarding pass for a flight - last June. Now? They can scan it directly from my phone.

Directions? Bah, thing of the past. Google Maps right on the iPhone & some cars even have the ability to upload directions DIRECTLY to your cars navigation system.

I love technology.

I was there; I worked at Adobe in 1985, and remember it well. What a great printer the LaserWriter was! We used to name the printers inside Adobe after typefaces. The one that got the most use was called "Gorilla", which in fact is/was a typeface design, though it was named somewhat mockingly, as the typeface was cartoonish (http://www.searchfreefonts.com/search/?q=gorilla).

I guess I'm not as old as you guys. :)

I didn't enter the Corp workforce until 88 which was when I started using PCs more. In 85 I was fresh put of H.S. developing apps on Atari ST. Back in those days we were all about Atari. One buddy had a mac, and we were all getting away from our TRS80 stuff.

It would be a stretch to call IBM PC's 'the standard' in 1985. Were you around in 85? It wasn't until a few years later that it started gaining business momentum. In 88 I worked at US Sprint and we had terminals (yeah - dumb terminals we used to program the switches), some IBM PC's for database programming, and some Macs. On the Mac we were testing hyper stacks. Windows was just starting to pick up, but most everyone used DOS.

Holy crap that makes me feel old - like i'm talking about the model T or something. Now I'm depressed! :(

I know the $6,000 price tag sounds steep, but remember before this baby came out, most business had to have stuff sent out for type setting. Then you'd have to take the type set copy that came back on rolls of paper, and paste it to a board, then that board had to be sent to printer for offset photography to make a plate. I remember doing catalogs with this printer for the Bissel Corporation. Our cost for the catalogs that year went from $100,000 to $70,000 just by using this printer to do our mock ups. This printer put a lot of people out of business.

Sure, there are sub $100 printers available today. Amazon is your friend:

http://bit.ly/1qgyj

And that's an HP Laserjet too! I do remember the first LaserWriter though. In the days of clacking "letter quality" printers that were basically typewriters hooked to a parallel cable and dot matrix printers that made that ripping sound as they printed the LaserWriter was so incredibly quiet.

I bought one of the first of these printers, paying the $6K. I was starting a small business and the impression that the sheets from this printer made was great. I'm sure we got some contracts that we would not have otherwise.

The printer weighed at ton (figuratively; it was 60 lbs, I think) and was unbelievably slow. If I recall, it was not easy or fast to download new fonts into the printer (they were stored there, not on the desktop machine), and there were not that many PostScript fonts available.

My Dad had one of those, and my school book reports in the 80's never looked so good!

Sub-$100 laser printer? You must be thinking of ink jet printers.

Sub-$100 black and white? I have a free color printer... though not laser.