[davemp]

> finance, "helping kids with the homework", "the little lady can store her recipes", and home automation. The only ones that really panned out were games (including edutainment), spreadsheets, word processing, and maybe small single-user databases.

finance -> spreadsheets

"helping kids with the homework" -> word processing

"the little lady can store her recipes" -> small single-user databases

Sounds to me like they all panned out except home automation.

[bitwize]

"Helping kids with the homework" I meant more in terms of using the machine as a study tool. Aside from edutainment titles, this didn't catch on until online encyclopedias and then the internet took root.

Using a computer to store recipes was wildly impractical. Using it to do basic CRM or point-of-sale tasks with a small relational or navigational database was much more appropriate.