Setting the stage: Computer technology in early 1985
Modems
In 1981, Hayes introduced the 300-baud SmartModem which was a revolution because all you had to do was plug the phone line into one end and the other in the RS-232 port. The modem handled dialing and data transfer, provided you had the appropriate drivers for your system. A 1200-baud version was released in 1982 and by 1985 you could pick up a 2400-baud Smartmodem for only $550(US).

Fax-capable modems didn't arrive on the scene until 1988, but in 1985 you could purchase the new GammaFax which was the first PC-to-fax board on the market. This device was probably a Group 2 fax, which meant that it was an analog fax transmitted a single page in no less than 3 minutes.

Desktop computers
Commodore released the 8-bit/2-MHz Commodore 128  in January 1985 and the $1,300(US) 16-bit/7-MHz Amiga 1000 in July 1985.  As a side note, "Amiga" comes from the Spanish name for "female friend". The monitor cost an additional $300, although it could plug into a TV or VCR, and the system booted from a 3.5" "Kickstart" diskette. The C-128 had a 80-column RGB colour display buts its chips were prone to overheating so didn't sell well. The overheating problem was often fixed by removing the electromagnetic shielding that was supposed to double, ineffectively, as a heat sink. Meanwhile, their 8-bit/1-MHz Commodore 64, originally released in 1982 for $600(US) and featuring 64-Kb of RAM operating, was still popular, having captured 40% of the personal computer market by this time.

The 8-MHz/16-bit Atari 520ST (shown right) was released in July 1985, featuring 512-Kb of RAM and booted from a 3.5" diskette. It competed with the Amiga and Macintosh for market share, being cheaper than both and featuring built-in MIDI ports that made it successful among people working with music. It also featured a high-resolution (640x480) monochrome monitor so was favoured for CAD applications. It could also display in colour, but no more than 16 colours and at a resolution of 320x200.

Tandy also sold a colour computer known as the CoCo-2 (shown left), part of their TRS-80 line with 64-Kb or RAM and ran the OS-9 operating system.

Apple was busy marketing two lines of products. For the desktop market, January 1985 saw the release of the $4,000(US) 5-MHz Macintosh XL but it was discontinued in September because they, quite literally, ran out of parts to make any new XLs. It featuring 512-Kb or RAM that could be expanded to almost 2-Mb and a 10Mb internal hard drive. The faster (8-MHz) and cheaper ($3,000US) Macintosh 512 (shown right), known as the Fat Mac, had been introduced September 1984 after the introduction of the $2,500(US) Macintosh 128, or Thin Mac, in January 1984. Unfortunately, sales of the Thin Mac plummetted in May 1984 due problems including the lack of fan which lead to it breaking down often and earning the moniker "the beige toaster", as well as it being impossible to upgrade its RAM. The latter problem was rectified be re-releasing the Mac-128 as the Mac-128K which could be expanded to 512-Kb of RAM. Meanwhile the $1,300(US) Apple IIe was still doing well because of its low cost and ease of use, and continued to do so into the 90s. The Apple Lisa 2 was being sold as a high-end machine for between $3,500(US) and $4,500(US). Although the 5-MHz system could be expanded to 2-Mb of RAM and sported a 10-Mb internal drive, business owners (the intended market) opted for the much cheaper IBM and IBM clones so Lisa was discontinued in April 1985.

IBM had a 6-MHz 286 desktop (IBM AT) with a 20-Mb hard drive that tended to fail (30% of them, in fact) if the drive heads weren't properly parked (retracted) first. It did, however, use the new "quad-density" 1.2-Mb floppies, and featured the new, and somewhat buggy, PC-DOS 3.0. The AT could be upgraded to display  16 colours from a 64-colour pallete at 640x480 resolution. Many IBM clones were available, generally running MS-DOS, including the 286 Compaq Deskpro and the Tandy 1000. Tandys were sold without hard-drives, as were most personal computers, but a "hard card" could be purchased to give it a 10 or 20-Mb hard disc.True IBM computers were the only ones that ran PC-DOS, but PC-DOS was simply MS-DOS  repackaged and optimized for IBM personal computers through an agreement between IBM and Microsoft. The 16-bit Windows 1.0 graphical user interface wouldn't hit the market until November 1985 and even then required PC-DOS or MS-DOS to operate, it not being a operating system but an interface system.

Portable computers
IBM sold a portable computer (151 model 68), which could only use the old 360-Kb 5.25" floppies, while Compaq introduced one of the first portable computers in the form of the 12.5-kg Compaq Portable (shown right). As one might expect, the "portable" Compaq was not really portable as much as "luggable".

Commodore released the first "full colour" portable computer, the 10-kg/1-Mhz SX-64, in January 1984 for a price of $1000(US). It featured a tiny (5") colour display, a 5.25" floppy drive, and a carry handle that doubled as a monitor stand.
Notebook computers
The first notebook computers arrived on the scene in 1983 starting with the 1.6-kg Epson HX-20 (first released in 1981) and followed by the $1,000(US) Tandy TRS-80 model 100 (shown left). Both had greatly limited battery life but included small LCD displays. The Epson even included a tiny dot-matrix printer and a micro-cassette drive, although an external floppy drive and voice synthesizer could be purchased seperately. The Tandy was preferred over the Epson, ran for about 20 hours on 4 AA batteries instead of the Epson's 50 on its NiCad rechargeable battery, and had a built-in 300-baud modem. By 1984 you could also purchase a video expansion pack for the Tandy that let you plug it into a CRT and read 5.25" floppies. It was, in effect, the closest thing to a PDA and remained popular well into the 1990s.

Data Storage
Data was stored on 720-Kb 3.5" Double-density (DD) diskettes, although the 5.25" High Density (HD) "floppies" were still preferred because they could hold up to 1.2-Mb.  A standard had been developed for CD-ROMs but it would be a while before it would reach the consumer. Audio CDs had finally arrived, with Dire Straits being the first to sell more than 1 million copies of its May-released Brothers in Arms CD. This CD was also the first to be digitally recorded, mixed , and mastered. Many people listened to it on their Sony Discman what had hit the market the previous year.

Printers
Hewlet-Packard has released the first inkjet and laserjet printers in 1984, the most popular of which was the $3,500 HP LaserJet that could print at 300-dpi at a rate of 8 pages per minute unless you were attempting to print graphics. In that case, you were limited to graphics of a maximum 1"x1" at 75-dpi, otherwise the printer ran out of memory. Printing 300-dpi graphics on up to 70% of the page would have to wait for the $4,000 Laserjet Plus which wouldn't hit the market until November of 1985. Most people were limited to dot-matrix printers such as the Epson MX-80 (shown here).

Apple introduced the $7,000(US) Laserwriter in March of 1985 as the first mass-market laser printer, but without the HP's graphics limit. This was because the Laserwriter used Postscript to interpret each page, letting the user add any amount of graphics, as well as arbitrarily orient text. Apple also sold a popular dot matrix printer known as the ImageWriter which could print both text and graphics up to 144 dpi at a rate of print a page per minute. In September 1985 they introduced their ImageWriter II that could achieve 160x144dpi at more than 2 pages per minute. It remained popular well into the 90s.

Mainframes and Mincomputers
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) introduced 10-Mb Ethernet in 1984 to connect its new 32-bit VAX mainframes into what it referred to as VAXclusters, making it popular among universities that wanted reasonably-priced but powerful computing systems.


Bulletin-Board systems
Before the Internet, there was the BBS (Bulletin Board System). The first of the BBSs appeared in the early 1970s but gained popularity as modem speeds increased.

Non-BBS Networks
France, in 1982, developed the Minitel system which used dumb terminals connected via 300-baud modems but allowed subscribers to chat, check stock prices, make train reservations, purchase items, and check telephone listings. Canada developed a similar system for the North American market called AlexTel, but that didn't go online until 1988.