[MaDeuce]

You're spot on. The IBM XT was introduced immediately after I graduated and went to work. My employer's employees got a 20% discount from IBM, as IBM was a client. I bought an XT (PC + 10MB hard drive) for $4K (list price $5K). A lot of money then for a new grad. The contrast between then and now is stunning.

And software costs... this was also the era when every "application" (think accounting software: accounts payable, payroll, accounts receivable, word processing) was $495 per application. A small business could easily pay $2-5K for basic software to run their business. And then, of course, it was a nightmare to setup and use and almost impossible to pull off without a "consultant".

But VisiCalc -- it was such a game changer. A totally different way of using a PC that enabled the "ordinary" non-computer person to become an order of magnitude more productive. I think Lotus 123 was the pinnacle of golden era of keyboard-driven spreadsheets, but it was only an incremental improvement over VisiCalc. The journey into the abyss began with Lotus Symphony.

I do like Excel and use it on occasion. But I pine for the days of lean software that did one thing exceptionally well.

[CWuestefeld]

> I think Lotus 123 was the pinnacle of golden era of keyboard-driven spreadsheets, but it was only an incremental improvement over VisiCalc.

They sat on their laurels with 123 v2 for much too long, and competitors surpassed them. v3 wasn't enough more to catch up.

Enable OA's spreadsheet module[1] was certainly head and shoulders above 123, offering real 3D capability (where what Excel views as multiple independent sheets could be addressed directly, so you could do things like have a layer for each month of an annual report, with the topmost being as @SUM() over the column of montly numbers below it), much richer set of functions, and integration with a database and word processor.

And there were others, too. I liked Lucid-3D, which wasn't really 3D but kinda fractal, where you could set up any given cell to drill into a sub-spreadsheet that was used to calculate a single value that would roll up into its parent. And Borland had a competitor, but I don't recall anything about that one.

[1] During college I had a part-time job working on this, on the testing team.

One cool thing we testers did to keep ourselves entertained was to build a spreadsheet casino. Each of us took on a given casino game to implement via spreadsheet macros. My game was blackjack, and it supported the full range of features: multiple decks, double-down, insurance, and all that.

Another guy did craps, the result of which was that we found a subtle bug in the app's random number generator. He set it up to play itself automatically and left it running overnight. When we came back in the next day, he was rich; that's not supposed to happen. He ran the test again the next night, and same thing. The bias in the RNG was causing rolls of 11 to happen more often than they should have.

[WillAdams]

I really wish multi-dimensional spreadsheets were more popular --- Lotus Improv was _amazing_, but unfortunately, Quantrix Financial is not something I could convince my employer to pay for, let alone justify for my own purchase, and sadly Flexisheet seems moribund.

Pyspread has some interesting features along those lines.

[ghaff]

There were a number of alternative spreadsheet models trotted out over time. But things had pretty much coalesced around the 2D Visicalc/Lotus model for mainstream users. Excel did add features like pivot tables but, basically, once Microsoft Office became dominant with Windows that sort of cemented what an office suite looked liked at least until you added in video conferencing. So you don't, for example, really have a mainstream desktop publishing program that goes beyond the limitations of word processing offerings.

[exe34]

> $495 per application.

it was a lifetime licence though. you can probably still run it today.

[d0mine]

Amortized over 10 years of lifetime usage, it is just $4.13 per month-- less than Netflix "standard with Ads" subscription.

[katzinsky]

With today's employee turnover you'd lose an incredible amount of money not doing a subscription. Even Netflix Premium would be cheaper.

[exe34]

Pretty sure most software were licensed per seat, not individual persons. The employee walks, but the seat remains.

[ghaff]

In practice, though, you need to upgrade to stay current. For software that people use as a daily driver, subscriptions are not obviously more expensive in general.

[exe34]

that's where we disagree: you don't usually need to stay current. as long as it does the job, it's current enough. if there's new features available that would add value to the business, then you have a business case to buy a new license. 95% of software update haven't really added any value since the early 00s.