On 30/08/2020 21:45, Erich B. wrote:

Does anyone remember this on the C64c when it was bundled with it?

I surely remember it even if it wasn't bundled with my machine, which
wasn't a C64C (just regular C64).

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On Tue, 1 Sep 2020 13:17:28 +0200, Silver Dream ! wrote:

On 01/09/2020 09:45, Tristan Miller wrote:

Greetings.

On 30/08/2020 21.45, Erich B. wrote:

Does anyone remember this on the C64c when it was bundled with it? It was my
first taste of Windows.

I never used it myself, though I found the magazine advertisements for
GEOS and its attendant applications quite memorable. Whoever came up
with them was a veritable marketing genius -- those ads were more
interesting to read than at least half of the articles in a typical
COMPUTE!'s Gazette.

And GEOS is a masterpiece of a product too. For example GeoPublish was
even reviewed as first class citizen among the well established DTP
packages of the time and praised for excellent quality for the price

Was also important it had support for various printers, like HP-PCL and
the LaserWriter from Apple, thus was used in the professional environment.

--
Andreas

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On Wed, 2 Sep 2020 07:11:24 -0400, J.B. Wood wrote:

Hello, and while some vendors may have put bundles together (anyone
old enough to remember Protecto Enterprises?),

Not being an American I don't from back in the day. But I read a lot of old BYTE magazines in recent years and saw their aggressive ads. They
advertised the C64 with 84K of memory, probably adding the space the rom
chips had on top of the 64K RAM.
--
Andreas

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On Tue, 01 Sep 2020 17:04:07 +1300, Erich B. wrote:

On Mon, 31 Aug 2020 08:45:23 +1300, Erich B. wrote:

A friend got it "late" (1988?) and standalone as far as I remember. It
was my second taste of Windows. First was the Amiga a year earlier.

GEOS was all black and white and gray but it was still cool for the time. I had
an Amiga 520 and I also had a Commodore 128d. It had the 64, 64c, 128 and ML(Machine Language) modes.

Here I only have emulators left. I am not able to find a working GEOS copy
for the C64, but have one for the C128. And that is in color.
--
Andreas

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On 02/09/2020 13:11, J.B. Wood wrote:

Hello, and while some vendors may have put bundles together (anyone old enough to remember Protecto Enterprises?), AFAIK GEOS was a
separately-sold product.  I still have GEOS, DeskPack Plus, geoChart, geoFile and geoCalc for the C-64.  Cost a few bucks but IMHO these
products were probably as close as you could get to "killer" apps on a
C-64,

I remember doing rather sizeable spreadsheets on GeoCalc, which threw
the other C64 spreadsheet applications (I don't remember the names -
multiplan I think was one and the other don't remember - visicalc?) on
their knees, with quite reasonable performance.

given its limitations as a practical small business platform, let

alone home use for MS Office-like stuff.  GEOS with its companion apps
did some great Macintosh-like things but oh so slowly if all you had was
one (not advisable) or two 1541 drives.  You really needed a 1750 RAM expansion or the GEOS RAM cart to get things moving.

True that. 1581 was already a good start as one could put/fit all needed
things on one disk. But only adding RAM card made it fly.

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On 02/09/2020 17:40, Andreas Kohlbach wrote:

On Tue, 01 Sep 2020 17:04:07 +1300, Erich B. wrote:

On Mon, 31 Aug 2020 08:45:23 +1300, Erich B. wrote:

A friend got it "late" (1988?) and standalone as far as I remember. It
was my second taste of Windows. First was the Amiga a year earlier.

GEOS was all black and white and gray but it was still cool for the time. I had
an Amiga 520 and I also had a Commodore 128d. It had the 64, 64c, 128 and
ML(Machine Language) modes.

Here I only have emulators left. I am not able to find a working GEOS copy for the C64, but have one for the C128. And that is in color.

The initial versions didn't have much colour on the UI, but they allowed
colour pictures within the hires mode limits obviously. Later versions
added more UI colours.

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On 02/09/2020 17:38, Andreas Kohlbach wrote:

On Tue, 1 Sep 2020 13:17:28 +0200, Silver Dream ! wrote:

On 01/09/2020 09:45, Tristan Miller wrote:

Greetings.

On 30/08/2020 21.45, Erich B. wrote:

Does anyone remember this on the C64c when it was bundled with it? It was my
first taste of Windows.

I never used it myself, though I found the magazine advertisements for
GEOS and its attendant applications quite memorable. Whoever came up
with them was a veritable marketing genius -- those ads were more
interesting to read than at least half of the articles in a typical
COMPUTE!'s Gazette.

And GEOS is a masterpiece of a product too. For example GeoPublish was
even reviewed as first class citizen among the well established DTP
packages of the time and praised for excellent quality for the price

Was also important it had support for various printers, like HP-PCL and
the LaserWriter from Apple, thus was used in the professional environment.

Exactly. That's what I recall being reviewed and praised in a mainstream printed magazine.

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On 01/09/2020 06:04, Erich B. wrote:

On Mon, 31 Aug 2020 08:45:23 +1300, Erich B. wrote:

GEOS was all black and white and gray

a) no, it wasn't - remember the lobster (or whatever it was) GeoPaint
picture ;-) - although C64 hires limitations played important role there

b) black/white and grey was considered "professional" look at that time
(mostly probably because the PCs weren't really capable of producing
much colour... remember GEM? And stuff like Ventura Publisher?

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On 9/1/2020 12:04 AM, Erich B. wrote:

GEOS was all black and white and gray but it was still cool for the time. I had
an Amiga 520 and I also had a Commodore 128d. It had the 64, 64c, 128 and ML(Machine Language) modes.

Hello, and that was true for the first GEOS version (1.x). The later
2.0 version allowed for color icons (red for system files, blue for
apps, yellow for BASIC programs, etc) on the Desktop and I have some 3rd
party GEOS games that use color. I've also got a collection of geoPaint pictures (a few in monochrome) that even today still look impressive on
an old C= 1701 monitor. Sincerely,

--
J. B. Wood e-mail: arl_123234@hotmail.com

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