Wow, that's something to think of Arthur C. Clarke banging out the manuscript on that machine. I have to admit, his move to Sri Lanka has always struck me as highly suspicious, though. It's a well known destination for sex tourists hoping to hook up with young boys. Clarke himself was accused of it, but later was officially cleared of the charges. Still gives me the creeps; don't know why anyone would want to live in a "pedophile's paradise." I'd be curious what people here think about it; I'm sure there must be plenty of science fiction readers out there.

Anyway, about CP/M. I noticed that some folks who grew up with CP/M are adamant about how much MS-DOS sucks compared to it. I've seen all sorts of comments about how CP/M was much easier to use, made more sense, etc., yet I just don't see that myself. To me, MS-DOS is a much easier system, albeit not as user-friendly as the later GUIs. It seems that both CP/M and MS-DOS expected you to sit down with a manual for a fairly lengthy period and work out the commands; it was not designed for the newbie just to plop down and hit the ground running. I still haven't gone beyond the very basics of either system--just getting directories and loading programs is about as far as I've gone. I've heard it's an amazingly powerful system if you know you way around a shell.

It's also a great story about how Kildall almost managed to get IBM to pick up CP/M as its OS of choice for the famous IBM PC. Definitely one of those great "What if?" questions. I think in some ways, the relative popularity of CP/M at the time might actually have proven a hindrance, in that Kildall may have been feeling a sense of security or simply overconfident.