These are responses from the MARCH exhibitors at the Trenton Computer Festival
for 2013, to these two questions:

"What were the five most common questions or comments of those who looked at
your exhibit?" and

"What was the most UNEXPECTED comment or question?" - edited by Herb Johnson 3/18/2013

* Herb Johnson,  Heath H8 and H19 H17 5.25-inch drives 

1) "I remember using that Heath H-8...does it have (various Heath options)
installed?"

2) "I really wanted that H-8 when it came out, but could not afford it."

3) "The H-19 is a *really sharp* screen display."

4) "how does this BASIC game work?"

5) "that's pretty neat/impressive stuff! (general how-about-that kind of
comments.

The surprising comment, was when someone pulled out a smart-phone and said
"...and look where we are at now." I said, "yeah, but in five years, that phone
will be worthless - but THIS (pointing to the H8 system) will STILL be worth a
thousand bucks". Not the kindest thing I said, but it's a point worth noting.

comment: One big difference between the Heath and the phone: With the
"smart-phone," it's the phone that's smart. With the Heath, it's the user
 that's smart. - Ken, on MARCH list

Comment: On the way home my son asked me if I could put BASIC on his PC. He said
his favorite thing was the Heathkit H8. - Bill Degnan, exhibitor. His son was
writing programs on the H8 at the show.


* David Gesswein, PDP-8 and Calcomp drum plotter

The most common was where variants of where do you get consumables.

The next was clarifying confusion over what was the purpose of a plotter.

For this crowd I got mostly either people reminiscing about stuff they
had familiarity with back in the day or people who wanted to look but didn't
seem to be interested in questions/discussion. Or I was just too scary.

"What was the most UNEXPECTED comment or question?" People pointing out the
similarity to 3D printers. Or, "Is it running VMS?", [that] was somewhat amusing.

* David Comley, KIM and TI Silent 700 printing terminal

The most frequent question I was asked was 'is that a KIM-1 ?'. How extraordinary !
A lot of people remembered them, and the Silent 700 too.

* Bill Degnan, MITS 680 and IMSAI 8080

[His son wrote BASIC programs on Herb's H8/H19 system during the show.] "On the
 way home my son asked me if I could put BASIC on his PC. He said
his favorite thing was the Heathkit H8."