Book Review- Commodore: A company on the Edge

It is with great pleasure that I present my book review; “Commodore: A Company on the Edge” by Brian Bagnall. I waited almost 2 years for this book to come out! This appears to be the 2nd printing which had also been revised.

This book reads very well. It traces the history of the company and explores the beginnings of a computer empire. I really enjoyed reading it, as a long time fan, this is definitely a must have. Commodore is one of the first companies to market a computer to be used in business and later for home use.

This book gives your first hand accounts of the activities of the company and even gives you an inside look into the heads of key personnel who had been interviewed. With every turn of the page, I began to appreciate even more what Commodore did for us all.

You know that they were the first ones to sell 1 million units of personal computers. They gave us a computer with colour, sound and the ability to telecommunicate. Commodore was also one of the only companies at the time that could design and make their own processors.

If something is to be said about the journey, it was a bumpy road. When I was done the book I was mad. Mad because Commodore was truly on the edge of becoming a microcomputer superpower and they lost it all. The issues really stemmed down to mismanagement, misappropriation of funds, greed, pride, misinformed decisions and questionable business practices in short a mess of inexperience.

It wasn’t all bad because Commodore did achieve a strong hold in the market beating out Apple, IBM and Radio Shack. As such, they were able to lay the foundation to what we know to be the computer industry today. Commodore had fantastic success in a nonexistent personal computer market and can be contributed as a pioneer. The question I have is why are they not recognized for their contribution?

There is definitely a lot to this book and too much detail to get into but I hope you will decide to pick it up and read it, you will not be disappointed. So much so that I feel inspired to re live the Commodore days and keep the memories alive.