[5]. The examples of the investment adviser and cotton trader come from New York magazine.
[6]. The estimates of the number of business computer buyers come from the Yankee Group’s Chris Christiansen.
[7]. “Gonna die” is from Popular Computing. The Osborne statements come from oft-repeated statements to newspapers or from magazines. “Mr. Osborne,” an aide said when I revealed that this chapter was on Brand X, “does not want to discuss the Kaypro.”
Andy Kay himself did not speak to me in a normal interview. His literary agent-friend, William Gladstone, feared that it might conflict with a project of their own, and Gladstone sought to deny me ownership of quoted material. Normally I would have told him to stuff it, but I needed the right quotes to tell the full story of my computer. So Gladstone and I worked out a compromise. After I sent thousands of words of questions via my Kaypro over the phone lines, he obtained Kay’s replies on tape. I submitted follow-up queries when Kay’s answers did not satisfy me. Gladstone insisted on reading this chapter for accuracy but never tried to censor me; in fact, he was helpful and pleasant to deal with. He even brought this manuscript to the attention of a publisher he knew (although I placed it through my agents). Gladstone’s help, incidentally, didn’t influence my perception of the Kaypro II as better than the archrival Osborne. I bought a Kaypro at a time when “William Gladstone” was nothing more to me than the name of a nineteenth-century English statesman; I already loved the company’s product. Just the same, determined not to write an extended press release, I’ve consulted with the corporation’s critics, and I have run this chapter past a San Diego Union reporter named Dan Berger, who exposed some of Kaypro’s less admirable management practices. I’m as grateful to Dan as to Bill.
[8]. The $200-million and $5-billion estimates came to me from Chris Christiansen of the Yankee Group, who said the latter figure might be very conservative. InfoWorld quoted another research firm, InfoCorp, as saying that 527,000 portable computers were sold in 1982—and that 5.1 million would be sold by 1987.
[9]. The San Diego Magazine article appeared in May 1983.
[10]. San Diego is the source of the “After we’d been at it eight or nine months” quote.
[11]. San Diego contains the quote on software purchases and royalties.
[12]. Business Week is the source of the facts on Kaypro’s disk-drive problems.
[13]. Kaypro later dropped the Kaypro II and replaced it with the $1,595 Kaypro 2X. It’s still a II, though, except for some improvements such as more disk space. The 2X’s disks store almost 400K each.