Twenty Years Ago This Ad Would Have Excited Your Inner Geek
This ad for Egghead Software from 1993 is a great look at the state of technology from twenty years ago. The first thing you notice is that the hot product is an MS-DOS 6 upgrade which brings one back into a time before Windows 95 took over the world. While there were people using Windows 3.1 most nerds hadn’t fully embraced it yet if they were running older machines. The other funny thing about this ad is it features vintage floppy discs available in 3.5″ or the really ancient 5.25″ size.
As the 90s went on Egghead Software grew as the industry took off in the early days of the internet. Here is software brochure from later in the 90s which features Lotus Symphony, PowerPoint sold alone and dBase Mac:
Sadly as a physical store Egghead Software only lasted from 1984 until about 1998 when large sized superstores started to dominate the market. Their online store was sold to Amazon back in 2001 and their old web address now brings you to Amazon’s software section.