Down Tax Memory Lane

Hi, Doug.

Well, that was interesting! In 1987, I was still in practice, preparing tax returns using a professional program that I can't even recall the name of at this moment. I was printing the returns on what I believe was the first Xerox 4045 laser printer in the state of Oklahoma; I got it in 1985. I had not yet used TurboTax, which was still produced by ChipSoft - and it was interesting to see Michael Chipman's demo at your link.

Gary Kildall's comment that CD-ROMs would be good for tax work was interesting. I got my first CD-ROM in 1989, precisely to replace much of the wall of tax books that I subscribed to then (for about $4,000 per year) and spent much of my and my secretary's time keeping up-to-date. I mentioned this in some newsgroup and a reader asked why in the world a CPA would need a CD-ROM! At that time, CDs were used for music and games and little else.

Did you hear the prices of hardware then? Nearly $5,000 for an Apricot 386 with 1 MB (not GB) of RAM and a 30 MB hard drive!

Ah, a tax accountant's nostalgia... ;^}

RC

I met many people in the late 80s and early 90s who thought CD-based publishing was going to be the wave of the future. Serious time and money was spent getting ready for the coming day when all the world's knowledge would be available on CDs - that we would buy. E.g., Microsoft Encarta.

My recollection is that the World Wide Web came along just in time to crush their dreams, while fulfilling the underlying promise to a degree none of us could have imagined.

Doug

R. C. White wrote: