Commodore Gives Its New Computer Its Old-School Brown 80's Skin

Way back in the 80's when I was a little geek I wanted a Commodore 64 so bad I could hardly stand it. My parents wouldn't spring for the beast back then and I ended up with the TI-99/4A and remained bitter about it each time I went to the store and saw all the cool games Commodore 64 had. I mentioned last summer that the Commodore name was coming back and like most things from my youth be it a movie or toys commodore has decided to go retro with the new machine.

Details of the new Commodore started to surface again this week. The company has decided to go retro in a big way and has given the new machine the same skin as the old 80's computer and I love it. The thing looks like the 80's computer on the surface, but underneath it's all modern. The new Commodore is cheaper than the original that sold for nearly $600 back in the day, at least in some of its new iterations.

The official price ranges from $250 to $900. Inside the beast are an Intel D525 processor, Intel NM10 chipset and ION 2 Graphics. The machine gets up to 4GB of RAM, Realtek 6-ch audio, and it has dual SATA 2 ports inside for storage. You can see from the pics that the thing has a CD drive and a memory card reader along with all the outputs we expect from a modern computer on the back. The machine has a heck of a price range and I don't note options that would drive the price up $650.

Commodore CEO Barry Altman says that the response to the machine has been "completely dramatic." I am not surprised, there are hoards of geeks that were in grade school like me when this thing came out that couldn't hope to afford the $600 price tag in the 80's that can certainly plunk down the loot this thing demands today.

[via NYT]