Just happened to come across this today from InfoWorld 1985:
I sure remember those days when I was so shocked to have all that RAM and couldn’t imagine what to do with it all… 512k! And of course,… hard drive? What’s a hard drive?
I think I may have an original paper copy of that in my garage! (looks like you got that off of a Google search?)
I wonder what Marty Rezmer is up to these days? I haven’t seen him in at least 25 years.
Remember when Panorama was touted as “The database that thinks it’s a spreadsheet”?
Apparently that was very memorable branding, because people continue to bring it up even now, decades later. The problem was that it confused people, who saw that tag line and then expected it to work just like a spreadsheet. That’s why the tag line was dropped.
It’s interesting how OverVUE keeps coming up so many years later. It seems to loom large in the memory of long time users. Interestingly from my point of view, I only worked on it from around March 1984 to mid 1986, around two years. Work on Panorama started in the summer of 1986. So in terms of actual programming, OverVUE was just a blip in my career. I guess objects in the mirror really are larger than they appear.
OverVUE was transformative for me. I was able to run books, print special sheets, keep inventory, etc. With one program and a bevy of floppy disks. Remember having the program on one disk and data on another? Seems quaint today.
I remember storing data and programs on audio casettes. Floppy disks were a big improvement!
My first storage medium was perforated paper tape - it got the job done.