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Top 10 Personal Computers
BWJones writes "The Houston Chronicle has posted a story by Dwight Silverman on the ten most popular PC's of all time. His inclusions are for the most part accurate, but his rankings confuse me. For instance, he includes 'hobby' computers such as the Altair, but excludes the Apple I and his ranking of the Compaq portable PC at number one ahead of the Altair, Apple I and II, Apple Lisa and Macintosh. Interestingly, the author also skips other significant platforms entirely, such as the Amiga and Atari computers as well as skipping over the much more significant Tandy products, the TRS-80 line of computers which like the Apple I and II had built in BASIC which helped introduce many people to programming."
Clearly not researched well, but I suppose he is entitled to an opinion.
excludes the Apple I and his ranking of the Compaq portable PC at number one ahead of the Altair, Apple I and II, Apple Lisa and Macintosh
Gee, let me guess, you're an Apple nut, right ?
Sorry, but I fail to see how anyone could rate either the Apple I or the Apple Lisa as one of the "most popular" PCs of all time. Both were more or less irrelevant by any standard (the Apple I was not made in really large numbers, and the Lisa was so expensive as to be essentially ignored) making it impossible to call either "popular". Just because both were forerunners of popular computers does not make them popular by themselves. Next made a computer that is in some ways the technical forerunner of today's Macs, and I don't think anyone would claim that these were popular computers either (although a MUCH better case could me made for the Next boxes, these were very much coveted in certain - but small - circles in their day).
And one computer that was sorely missing was the Sinclair ZX-81, that thing sold a ton and it was if I recall the first personal computer under $100 (or was it $200) ?
I'm still trying to figure out all its modes of operations, but it's a classic still.
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