I thought that some of you would get a kick out of these ads that appeared in some magazines (DBMS, Dr. Dobbs) back in the early 90's (click on the link above each image to see the full version). You'll have to forgive the snarky comments, but wow, were some of the claims made in these ads bold. The times definitely have changed...feel free to reminisce in the comments.

Seven grand for a 66MHz 486 server with 16MB of RAM, courtesy of Dell:

Dell Server



Here's Borland, reassuring all Ashton-Tate customers that dBase is going to be in good hands (it wasn't, but not because of Borland, rather because it was dBase):

Borland's dBase



A Visual Basic ad, back before Delphi came along and put the whole thing to shame (Visual Studio eventually caught back up):

Visual Basic



Here's a Paradox ad with a funny little bit about "see your dealer", which most people today might not quite understand:

Paradox



This one is a good lesson on why writers should stop trying to predict the future. Yes, some of their points are still valid, but it is 17 years later and SQL is still going strong:

SQL's Clouded Future



A good example of how a "dream tool" can become a nightmare through the passing years:

Revelation OpenInsight



"The Most Powerful Database in the Windows World", which has to be tempered with the fact that the "Windows world" was still quite small at that time:

WindowBase



This was a state-of-the-art Windows interface back in 1993. A word to the wise, if your Windows application still looks like this, you need to update it:

Gupta SQLWindows



And finally, an old ad from Embarcadero Technologies:

Embarcadero Technologies

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Tags: Blasts from the Past

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Comments (5)	You must be logged in to comment
David Cornelius said...	Reply
Wow, a Dell server for 7 Grand!?  Thanks for sharing these--pretty funny that the future of SQL was once unsure in the eyes of some.  This reminds me of the TurboMan posters: http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/20297
Tim Young [Elevate Software] said...	Reply
Cool.  I can see why some people didn't care for the comic ads back then - such ads were about 20 years ahead of their time.  Now comics are mainstream and everywhere.
unlocksua said...	Reply
Haha, this brought back so many memories! Those early ‘90s ads were definitely bold — some of the claims now seem almost unbelievable. https://ragdollhitstickman.io
aidio said...	Reply
These old ads are a trip! It's wild to see how much tech has changed. Makes you wonder what future generations will think of our current "cutting edge" stuff. By the way, if you're looking to transcribe some audio from the past (or present!), check out https://audio-to-text.org/ - could be useful for archiving those old recordings!
aidio said...	Reply
These old ads are a hoot! It's wild to see how much tech has changed. Speaking of evolution, have you seen what you can do with an AI Character Generator these days? https://aicharactergenerator.online The possibilities are endless!