Slashdot Mirror
Top 10 Personal Computers, Revised
rebelcool writes "Dwight Silverman of the Houston Chronicle has revised his Top 10 PCs of all time, mainly as a result of this Slashdot story. He addresses many of the replies written to him wondering why X system wasn't on the list in Y position, but also chose to replace the Apple Newton with the Amiga A1000."
AOL's $299 PC?
The bigot!
The Commodore 64 was fantastic when I first ran across it. It was the first computer that I recall any of my friends having. Unfortunately, my parents wouldn't think of buying a computer at the time (and I couldn't afford one being somewhere about 10 and all). I often would go to a friend's house and play on his family's computer and play games like Zork.
Unfortunately, it never went much further than that. However, the inclusion of the Apple Macintosh in our school computer labs was a huge influence as that is when I first recall seeing a GUI like that.
For those reasons, those computers will always remain classics for me and are definitely part of my top ten.
*
troll blacklist. Please mo
Goes to show that united geeks carry weight.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
that slashdot readers are a "linux advocacy" community?????
...trying to pigeonhole only a 'top 10'. Top 10 WHAT? It would be easy to ignore the contributions of 8-bit computers nowadays, but at one time there weren't many other options and each type had a specific advantage.
Hint to the writer: If you're going to do a list like this, try and be more specific.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Mr. Silverman seems very obliging, revising his original list to conform to certain external demands. The one question I have is why he didn't acknowledge his own poll (the one on the original top 10 page)? The largest number (34%) cleary chose the Apple Macintosh over every other computer, with a couple recieve close to no votes at all (0-1%)! I don't use a Macintosh, but if so many people feel that way, shouldn't Mr. Silverman think about it?
The cycle continues.
He will just get more emails now from the same people wondering why he didn't put machine x in frount of computer y.
It is impossible to make a top 10 list that will make everyone happy, but it is cool that he took other peoples ideas to value and re-did this list to accomidate information that he learned in the process
PCs are toys... real men use an IBM System/390.
...just to make sure he never makes the same mistake again, that'll teach him!
Jonathanjk.com
I'm not sure on what basis top 10 were chosen but I feel the iMac should be a definate candidate. Not only did it revitalize a company struggling at the time (Apple) but it's the first computer I can think of that was considered by the general public to be cool looking and since the iMac showed it could be done computers have really become alot more stylish in appearance (whether for good or evil). I feel that for its popularity and effect on the modern computer industry the iMac deserves a spot.
I stole this Sig
Is it the hardware or the OS... or both?
Those that suggest you "dance like no one is watching" really want to see you make a complete fool of yourself.
For my 2 bit computer to make the list...
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
Why Altair? Imsai 8080 was much more prevasive in the home with hobbiests than the Altair. The list in the article was supposed to be specific to computers that affected PCs. I knew lots of people with Commodores and Atari machines. But there were hardly any people really using Altairs or Imsai.
BTW, I still have my Imsai 8080 and also a fully functioning Polymophic 88 with a Northstar Horizon hard sectored controller.
Hey, I have used the Amiga 500 the longest of any computers I ever owned. From 1991-1996 to be exact and it was actually a pass me down from my father who upgraded to the Amiga 1000. I continued to use it in college despite the protests of my professors telling me that I needed to use a PC or Macintosh.
Woohooo! :-)
Perhaps the /. editors schedule themselves to provide as much coverage as possible, and michael happens to work on Saturday and Sunday but takes off some other days. I haven't really noticed/paid attention. But really, weekends are completely arbitrary. I often think that I'd prefer to work on Saturday or Sunday and take Monday or Friday off instead. It'd be particularly handy during the holidays so I could do some shopping when the malls aren't packed with people who are off on weekends.
If not in the top 10, I think that the IIci was a great machine.
Who thought that a 25mhz 68030 with 6882 co-processor could be so sexy.
I don't like apple in general.
I find their computers annoying, and hard to use, mostly unfamiliarity, and that the UI isn't very intuitive to me.
But I really disagree with removing the Newton, that was an amazing piece of hardware, the first time I saw it, I was blown away, and it was already a few years old by then.
I saw it, played with it, and thought "this is where computers are going for the public".
I really think it was a landmark in computer history, it was just too recent for people to note the effect.
Actually, that should at least get a "funny", considering that "Amiga Rulez" was one of the comments the article's author mentioned receiving a lot of. My belief is that the OP was just being silly :)
I was laughing my ass off when I read the complaints sent to him about no Amiga, the problem was that no one else used it other than the few "in the know", we emulated the Mac, why buy one, I also had that pc emulator thingy too :-)
I still run into ex-fanatics and it's a strange sort of instant bond, especially if they hung in there and got AmiTCP running at the end of it's existance, that knowledge got me into Linux/BSD.
Give me a datatypes drawer!
I have two nominees:
1) Leading Edge Model D This PC was the first important "low cost" PC that was nearly 100% IBM compatible. I remember it having quite a following and marketshare back in the day.
2) Wells American A*Star This AT class machine came with a full set of schematics for the motherboard. I remember reading Peter Norton's guides about the interaction of the various chips, then following the traces in the schematics. There is no better way to learn "internals" than that.
List looks pretty accurate to me now. I'm not an Amiga fan, but it was definitely a huge machine. If he wanted the Newton in, he should have chucked the Tandy Sensation, whatever the heck that was. I know every other machine, but not that one.
Even though it was built in 1985, it can still do a few things that the newest of computers can't. That after nearly 20 some features are yet unmatched gives it a place in history.
The Amstrad 1512?
In the UK anyway, it was one of the big milestones in computing.
It was the first affordable x86 machine, running MS DOS and GEM and capable of running Lotus 123 and MS Flight Simulator - the two killer apps of the time.
The fact that it was available in Dixons meant that the typical non techie person got to see it.
It was a lot cheaper, and better specced than the typical IBM machine.
The revised list is similar to what I would have come up with (if I ignored any local (read British) computers). All the required computers are in the list with the exception of the Sensation. The choice of including the Tandy Sensation is a bit puzzling to me as I would have thought that the TRS-80 was more deserving. I detect a strong authors bias for this particular machine. It does not deserve to be in the list (meow, meow, claw, scratch).
Tpin Dibbaert! G0 Affle!
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
how can you define the best computer of all times? there are literally thousands of different systems, and 10 times as many different users, some systems are mainstream (eg. dell, HP, compaq and others) then there are all the local systems, and the topnotch DIY geek puter
somebody explain this to me!
(and why do you americans keep making lists?)
*resistance is futile, or fuzzy, i dunno*
The "PCs Limited Turbo"? Yeah, that was another DOS machine, and helped revolutionize the turn toward mail-order PCs. Again, that wasn't about the OS.
So those people who complained that the Mac should be number 1 because its OS influenced Windows are missing the point. That doesn't seem to have been the focus of this columnist's article. Now if you want to have another article talking about the most influential OSes, well that's entirely different, and I doubt you'd find the "Tandy Sensation" on that list.
Still, I guess I will make my nits too. If you are going by ubiquity and influence in the marketplace, would you really put the Compaq Portable PC #1? Yeah, it revolutionized portability back when everybody and their uncle's dog were making nothing but desktop PCs. But I would think either the Apple II or the IBM PC would be the truly revolutionary boxes. Those were the boxes that told the world that you could have a computer of your very own, both at home and on your desk at work. That was a true paradigm shift that none of the others matched, IMO.
The Tandy was not that sensational - cause I never heard of it either...
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
/nt
Some of these den't even belong on this list. I don't think adding a little more memory, hard disk, cdrom or sound card makes it on this list.
10. Osborne I;
This was the first luggable, dump compaq portable.
9. PCs Limited Turbo;
Who is PC limited, just another clone company, sure maybe its Dell, but Compaq and Gateway were there first.
8. Tandy Sensation;
Most everyone heard of the TRS-80, but Sensation? All Tandy did was add a CDROM and a sound card. SVGA was already common.
7. Commodore Amiga A1000;
Great Addition, the more/less utility to view files looked like a movie title production. And Aming had multitasking too.
6. Commodore 64;
5. MITS Altair 8800;
4. Apple II;
This should be first, this was the first mass market computer with expandable slots, floppy drive.
3. Apple Macintosh;
2. IBM PC 5150;
1. Compaq Portable PC.
Where is the first real portable with a LCD? It was the portability but the first clone. But this shouldn't have been so high, if there was Apple, then IBM, there wouldn't be anything to clone. Copycats shouldn't rate so high.
My list
1. Apple ][
2. IBM PC 5150
3. Compaq PC, this was the first clone which begat th entire clone industry
4. Apple Macintosh
5. Apple Newton
1st handheld
6. PC Laptop with LCD, very portable!!
Actually the Apple ][ c had a laptop profile but no LCD screen.
7. Commodore 64;
8. Commodore Amiga A1000;
9. Osborne I;
10. Tandy TRS-80
this was used alot in the 80s
WhatMeWorry
Yeah, but what about the Packard Bell? They totally forgot Packard Bell
Mr. Silverman is really mischaracertizing his whole article, and statements such as above explemplify the distance between his knowledge and experience and the reality of the early computer industry.
In the early days, people purchased computers to "program" them. Part of the fun was taking a machine and teaching it to do new things. He should more-aptly rename his list to the, "Top 10 computer-controlled consumer devices of all time" because there is a difference.
Again, not listing the TRS-80 on the list is gross negligence. The TRS-80 was the most popular computer in the world for many more years than most of the other computer models were even around. Even if one panders to Mr. Silverman's goofball rationale of ignoring computers seemingly built for "nerds", more people used TRS-80s for business applications than Apple in most of the early years.
And what the hell is the MITS Altair doing on the list then? Make up your mind. Either you're going to give props to the computers that were most influential, or the ones who ran the most ads in Byte magazine that 7 people in Virginia actually purchased (namely the Tandy Sensation - a computer I still haven't ever seen even though I owned every other computer on his list, as well as dozens of others). But make up your mind. Your list isn't either.
It's amazing. I didn't think he could take his suck-ass list and make it even worse, but he did. If anything, this proves that dorks like this are yanking the chain of the tech community and laughing as they bask in their 15 minutes of attention.
I must say the original article's list strikes me as very much the view of someone who doesn't particularly like or use computers, but I guess it's all a matter of opinion. Here's what I think of as a more middle-of-the-road list (in no order):
...er...
ZX81
Commodore 64
TRS-80
Amiga A500
BBC Model B (I hated it but it was undeniably of huge importance in the uk)
Atari 800
Heathkit computer
Apple II
Palmpilot
Sony Vaio series, symbols of the commoditization and appliance-ization of the PC.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
I can't believe there's no Sinclair Spectrum in there. I think it's pretty much responsible for the current UK IT industry. Most developers that I know around my age (mid 30's) in the UK learned to program on it.
Noooo... no way Slashdot is a "linux advocacy" group. have you been hiding in a cave for the past couple of years? All we do is praise Microsoft and its latest heroic efforts in bringing world peace with Windows Longhorn, and lobby for SCO tariffs on those peksy illegal hackers who steal public domain code. *COUGH*
I still can't figure out how peoplepc gives you a nice Gateway computer for the price of your dial up connection. Could this be, if price is an object, the best computer of all time? Look, I pay my ISP $19.95 per month, and people pc has a computer plus dial up for that. Could we say that as long as I intend to go online, I pay $19.95 per month (and that money goes out the door never to return) for as long as I am able to get online.
With people pc, you have a "membership", and for the term, 48 month, you have the computer, then at the end of the term, you renew, and don't they then send you a new computer (then current technology) and you return the now 4 year old machine? Just this week, in reporting on the AOL 299 machine, Wall Street Journal reported that in the last quarter alone, people pc added 90K accounts! What then, is the catch, besides the finance charges, not getting to keep the machine?
Especially when viewed from the angle of paying your ISP from now on...
...asking "Have you ever heard of the Tandy Sensation?" Goodness knows I never had, until I saw this fellow's first article, and as a CoCo user, I was fairly attentive to what Radio Shack sold up until early 1991 when they finally stopped selling the CoCo3 and went totally over to the Dark Side. Sounds like it was just another (insert favorite expletive) PClone.
no iBook!? how can this be?? Steve said it was insanely great!! he wouldn't lie!, would he?
Although everyone can't ever be 100% satisfied with their own list - much less someone else's, it's good to see the Amiga got its appropriate level of respect.
Much more than Mac zealots, Amiga users have continued to utilize their 10-15 year old Amigas for things that matter in our modern world.
Sure, you can play text based games, use ssh/telnet, and "word process" on nearly any PC in existance, but old Amigas can (and still are) utilized for video work.
While I think the Newton deserved a spot in the historical review, the Amiga is truly - like the Mac - one of the forebearers of our modern Gnome, KDE, Mac OS X, and WinXP computing environments:
The Amiga was the more deserving of the two.
I think that's a very "fair and balanced" list (I'd take off the Tandy and replace it with the Newton or the original Graffiti Palm). The reason Amiga zealots persist is only due to it not receiving its historical recognition. This article will go along way to making them feel validated. I feel that Mac OS X shares much in spirit with the original Amiga, and I have long since switched to the new keeper of the flame - on the desktop. Linux and FreeBSD will (forever?) remain the server favorites.
Spiritual Leader of Green Bay Net
I believe the MiniTel was setup in the late 70s, which of course IS long before Microsoft invented the internet with the introduction of Windows 95....
First they burn books, then they burn people.
Where is the Xerox 820 and/or it's hobbyist clone the 'Big Board'??
CP/M on the Z-80 rulez!
A Good Intro to NetBS
Dammit
No, you were correct the first time. "It's" is a contraction of "it is."
[Insert pseudo-intellectual anti-Amerikan/pro-socialist sig here]
I know the whole article is a troll, but I can't resist commenting anyway:
10. Osborne I
No big deal. Not worthy of the list. It was neither the first portable (which was the IBM 5100) nor the best-selling. It has the distinction of being the goofiest portable with the most ridiculously-small display ever. The Kaypro II was more of a milestone, more useable and more practical and more widely available.
9. PCs Limited Turbo
If we're going to call attention to clone manufacturers, then Compaq should be here. And Compaq's 386 was the first 80386-based PC on the market. PC's limited was just one of the many clone manufacturers who's main distinction was that they didn't end up going out of business early on.
8. Tandy Sensation
It seems me and almost everyone else on the planet don't know what this computer is doing here. I have to assume Mr. Silverman has a warehouse full of these doorstops he's trying to inflate the value of.
7. Commodore Amiga A1000
Worthy of being on the list, mainly because, like many Apple models, what it lacked in large-scale consumer acceptance, it made up for in loyalty and user satisfaction. Computers like the Amiga (Apple Lisa, NeXT, Tandy 1000, etc.), if more widely accepted, might have set the industry in a different direction.
6. Commodore 64
Worthy of the list as well. This PC was many peoples' first introduction to the PC world.
5. MITS Altair 8800
No list would be complete without this computer, but the company with which it's included is inconsistent with whatever point Mr. Silverman is
trying to make (beyond getting attention by inciting the tech community with his ignorance).
4. Apple II; 3. Apple Macintosh; 2. IBM PC 5150;
All worthy.
1. Compaq Portable PC.
This might be a worthy addition to the list, but not as the top spot and not at the expense of listing many more important computers, specifically the TRS-80 (Models I and III), or many of Tandy's innovations in this field including the Pocket Computer, PC100 (Kyocera), and Color Computer. Many people have listed a lot of early clones, such as the Leading Edge. And IBM's XT was also a pioneer in taking computing to the next level with its 10MB hard drive. As for portables, the Compaq Portable III was more "important" and truly more portable than the monster that was the Model I.
Dwight Silverman is right! The A1000 rulez! It is the oldest of my machines still running.
;) I used to send stuff to and use stuff fro FredFish before I even heard of GPL and FSF.
Marble Madness still gets some play time!
Thanks for remembeing this great machine...
~8^]
assuming you can find dialup service for $9.95/mo (and in many cities, you can), that's a $480 computer. still not a bad deal.
What? How could he forget AOL's $299 PC?
That is a prison term, not a computer.
its a joke, moron
No way! AmigaOS 4.0 forever! ... that is, if Amiga, Inc. doesn't go bankrupt in the next few days and weeks.
...will always be the machines I build with my own two fsck'in hands!
No, this is AOL's PC.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
I bet the dewey beats truman guy wished he could go back and change the news like this!
But I was using it as a possessive instead:
"...the hardware itself, and it's popularity"
So I was wrong the first time.
I posted about his original list here on /. when it was first mentioned here. By tacking on the Amiga he really hasn't fixed a thing, and he hasn't adequately addressed any of the substantial complaints made the first time around.
For starters, the Tandy Sensation doesn't belong on *anybody's* list. CD-ROM drives and "multimedia" abilities were already commonplace on the Macs by the time Tandy slapped together their Sensation. Being the first major manufacturer to do in the clone market what Apple had already been doing for quite awhile really doesn't count for much - it was obvious that's where the market was heading at the time. It's not like the Sensation was a sales . . . er, um . . . sensation that inspired other clone makers to follow in its footsteps. They all continued to do what they'd been doing for some time,and would continue to do straight through the '90s - chase the Mac. And I guarantee you could have purchased a similarly equipped PC straight out of the pages of ComputerShopper back in the day. The Trash-80 is arguably the only important machine Tandy ever released, given the sheer number of programmers and students who cut their teeth on that system, although the CoCo had its devotees too I suppose.
If he wanted to cite a revolutionary multimedia clone, he should have put the Mindset PC in his list instead. That system was well over 5 years ahead of its time when it was released in 1984.
And I don't think the Amiga belongs on his list, either. He claimed to be listing "important" PC's in "home computing", and the Amiga certainly wasn't any more important than the Atari ST, the Sinclair QL, the Acorn Archimedes or any of the other Macalike systems that came out in the mid-'80s. None of them established themselves as a standard the way the Macs and PC's did, and while much ado has been made concerning the Amiga's multimedia abilities, little of note happened to the home computing market because of them. The Amiga's video editing abilities were certainly neat, but like the Atari ST's MIDI interface, there wasn't much use for those abilities in the home. How many home PC users had a video editing setup or a bunch of MIDI keyboards?
The PC's and Macs were both able to successfully exceed the Amiga's graphics and sound abilities within just a couple of years, mostly because both the PC and Mac leveraged their formidable economies of scale to rapidly adopt more powerful 32-bit processors and more capable expansion interfaces. Custom chipsets are nice, but they're no match for the rapid adoption of faster, better CPU technology. And all of those Macalikes quickly fell behind the PCs and Macs when it came to offering faster chips and higher-resolution displays.
If you want to list an "important" home computer with multimedia capabilities, swap out the Amiga with the Atari 800. When it was released in 1979 it was far ahead of its time, and it maintained that lead really until the Macintosh came out in 1984. The C64 came close to equaling it, but no 8-bit system ever truly bested it, and in many respects as a home computer it was superior to the IBM PCs (it was certainly easier to configure and use, and sported the best game titles of the era).
And I see Compaq's stupid clone is still tops on his list. What a joke that is. Sure Compaq was the first to successfully reverse-engineer the PC, but they hardly would have been the last. Japan, Inc. would certainly have gotten around to it eventually even if nobody in America had bothered. As I said about the first article, the hardware doesn't matter all that much, anyway. It's the interface and the abilities that count. If you want to look back in history to choose an important home computer, I should think you'd want to look for the first successful machines to implement the interface and abilities commonly used today. Since we continue to utilize the same interface introduced to the home computing market by
I remember playing "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiago?" on my friends' Apple II at the tender age of 10, we had a blast and learned (gasp) something at the same time.
;)
Not to be topped by the first time I played Doom, however...
If you're old enough to argue about these computers, you're old enough to remember David Ahl's books BASIC Computer Games and More BASIC Computer Games. Both are available on the Web, as of today.
Do you guys remember the story about one of the TOS (operating system) authors putting something like a 32-byte-long love note into the operating system code? Was it an urban legend or not?
The list should be called top 10 US computers since it doesn't include a single non-US PC. And there PCs built in Europe (as well as Asia, I guess) that are worthy of inclusion to the list. The first computer that comes to my mind is the Sinclair ZX Spectrum.
How could everybody forget about analog computers? Just as a concept they are probably worth a vote.
FREE MICHAEL!!!
With purchase of a Michael of equal or greater value.
So he writes an article ... gets a bunch of pseudo-hate-mail from people that disagree, then goes back and "fixes" his list?
... would I haved bothered emailing him to say "jolly good job chap ... you've selected my favorite CPU". Nope. Not that I'd write him and complain if my machine of choice hadn't made the list either, but apparently some people did.
... especially as the end of the year, and bonus time, approaches? But if he's going to bend to the wishes of some nerds with an email account, maybe he should've taken the time to do a more thorough research job in the first place instead of congratulating himself for bringing more traffic to the site. All of that original traffic was coming to read a list that I guess was wrong. Way to go Dwight!
If my "system of choice" had made the original list
My point is that simply changing a list because he wants to address the concerns of those that had a reason to voice their disagreement doesn't seem like the right way to go about it. Sure, he'll bring more traffic to the site and to his column in particular. Who wouldn't want to single-handedly be responsible for that not once, but twice
is still one of my favorite Amiga memories...
Laura Longfellow (Maxine Headroom to us old Amiga fans) definitely cut a stunning figure in that famous video. I've tried to find a copy of it online to no avail (it was only about 15 frames per second if I remember right... damned choppy by today's standards, but absolutely cutting edge at the time).
Must have been late 1980's if I remember correctly...
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
In the spirit of things, I've compiled my own list of the Top 10 most amusing entries from the top 10 most "important" lists from Houston Chronicle writer, Dwight Silverman:
10. Most important places to live: #1. "Houston"
09. Most important Teletubby: #8. "Winky"
08. Most important color: #3. "Burnt Sienna"
07. Most important bathroom toiletry: #1. "Air Freshener"
06. Most important sea creature: #2. "Frog"
05. Most important car: #6. "AMC Pacer"
04. Most important medical treatment: #3. "Botox"
03. Most important spice: #1. "Fennel"
02. Most important career: #1. "Writer for Houston Chronicle"
01. Most important computer: #1. "Compaq Portable"
I still can't figure out how peoplepc gives you a nice Gateway computer for the price of your dial up connection.
They don't. Did you read the details? It's a four-year contract, and the "$299" figure is only if you have perfect credit. It's financed through a bank, and by the time your four year contract is up, you HAVE paid pretty much full retail price for it, plus interest... and meanwhile you've gotten (essentially) a free dialup account. Whee.
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
"somebody explain this to me!
(and why do you americans keep making lists?)"
David Letterman started it.
I admit, IBM PC jr was kinda cute. But it was ridiculously overpriced with ridiculous expansion attachment unit. At least its successor, PS/2 Model 25, was somewhat expandable with half length ISA slot (but also handicapped by MCGA graphics card).
Hm, this reminds me of the dawn of graphical role playing games. Ultima... Bard's Tale... Pool of Radiance.
I don't think it was very widely used, but: The first laptop!
It actually looks a lot like the early Apple laptops.
hey!
Could you define nonlocal please? You're posting copy on a website viewable by the public internet. Is the internet nonlocal to you? Or is this just another Texas-is-the-center-of-the-planet things?
Speak truth to power.
Remember the A4000's programmed I/O IDE disks, compared to the A3000's blazing (for the time) DMA SCSI. Recall the A4000's fscked-up memory access speed, because it was originally designed for an '030 and didn't handle the '040's burst mode right. The A4000 was still a good machine relative to the industry as a whole, but compared to Commodore's track record, it was an embarrassment. An example of what the AGA machines could have been like, would be the unreleased A3000+.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
To be a 'JOKE' it would have to be either satirical or ironic, and it is neither. 'Filthy American Jews' is really just rude. And there really isn't much that is funny about Hitler -- unless you are making fun OF him. Now THAT would be funny. Much riper material -- his being a failed artist, potentially homosexual, possibly half Jewish...
The font isn't bold enough, please try to up the boldness in order to deliver your point more forcefully and cogently, mkay?
Also, please try to make the content sound a little less whiny next time, it is a huge turnoff to be cruising around the -1 district and come across this bloated self-righteous tear-fest.
I may be alittle bias, but i may not since i dont use Amiga's, but i did.
I did find it a little strange that the Amiga 1000 didnt make it into the 10 initially, how could someone over look this?
That machine was head and sholders above anything for its time and we can thank it today because it brought multimedia to us. It WAS the first multimieda computer, although it was mainly for games, the machine came with a powerful operating system that even today i still inuse by thousands of people. Thats no joke!
Check out the fan sites such as Amiga.org and AmigaWorld.net.
This was a computer made by love and upon opening the case and looking inside, you can see the signitures of each person that made the computer. Maybe not everyone, but certainly the more well known or more involved ones.
This is what google has to say about the Amiga A1000
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
Compaq was founded and is headquarted in Houston. Coincidence or Conspiracy? http://h18020.www1.hp.com/corporate/history.html
Morrow was a computer manufacturer from the CP/M era.. Morrow sent themselves almost broke developing the first true laptop, the morrow pivot (a msdos machine).The developed the msdos XT compatiple computer essential inhouse. The thing worked but they were in debt from the venture and licensed the design, concurrently with the manufacture of the real morrow pivot, to Zenith who named made it as the z-151 and z-171. Morrow was aiming for a contract with the US tax office but Zenith got the contract with the licensed design.
Morrow went almost under and stripped to the core until Zeniths royalty check started to role in.
So what was so good about the design. It was a fully functional portable computer that was smaller and lighter than a normal briefcase full of paper. They had a costume design state of the art LCD display to it.
To put it another way it was not just luggable, but actually portable, you could carry it one your shoulder without putting your back out.
It's the missing link between Luggable computers (those lead bricks with crt screens that claimed they were portable) and todays laptops.
He didn't say he was revising the list by popular vote or that the list was democratic.
To my knowledge, the A1000 was created by Jay Minor, who i believe has "passed on" now. For give me if im wrong :). He worked at Atari and possibly lead the development of several of their chipsets. Jay wanted to create something astonishing, something to blow the computer world away. For some reason or another, Atari didnt want to. So Jay quite and moved to his back shed where he worked on the Amiga. You can still find pictures where each chip was built out of several bread boards... Interesting stuff!
:)
A miga_Lorraine_finally_.php
Anyway, eventualy commador bought the Amiga design and hired Jay, Made everyone involved famous and rich and then killed them Amiga less than 10 years later
Heres a nice, show report? and some technical details about the first Amiga or as it was code named, "lorraine".
http://www.atarimagazines.com/creative/v10n4/150_
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
People PC doesn't want the $299.00. only the monthly membership fee, which I am comparing to the money paid for an ISP. My ISP charges $19.95 per month for unlimited dial up, no timeouts or limits. Problem is, does the dial up access People PC gives you do that? They say it is subject to "timeout procedures". Also may not be suitable for fairly big downloads. You don't own the computer, so what if you give up on Windows and partition the HDD, add Debian, Slackware, and perhaps go back to Windows 98. Then what. Would you get charged after four years for doing that?
I've looked at the Dell site today, and they have a really nice machine for under $400.00, with free shipping, no monitor. The People PC box for $19.95 has no monitor either, but the Dell only has 6 months of Earthlink or AOL (horrows) thrown in. After the 6 months, you have to pay $$ for continued dial up. All considered, I'll go with the Dell, and it'll be mine to keep rather than go back like the People PC.
The Tandy TRS-80, also known as the "trash" 80, is an egregious omission. Any widespread personal computer that gets an endearing nickname like that deserves to be immortalized...
The Sensation what?
computers of the WWW era it would have to be the Next computer at Cern and the one at SLAC. The first one is the machine upon wich the first webserver and webbrowser where written (along with html etc) The second is the one that did (and still could accourding to Chuck) house the original SLAC HEP (High Energy Physics) Library website. Online searchability of millions of scientific papers and reports. The Next may not have sold alot but the few it did sell left a very influential mark.
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
A fairly nice computer for $400 with no monitor... Obviously I'm not alone here in wondering if you don't know that you can build one for much cheaper than that, and with the money you save you can get a year of AOhelL or Earthstink...
--Forest C. Adcock--
was an amazing system for its day - digital audio in/out, graphics, bundled video camera and s-video in... all in a quite small compact package.
Also one of the most complex main boards with 12 layers of circuit traces...
in fact basic color support was present in even the 128K Mac - albeit only basic 8 colors.
There was even a color Apple Lisa hidden in the labs at Apple Cupertino that never saw the light of day. Only internal people know about this one.
But...but..but whadda about the Coleco Adam, huh?
Hi-speed tape drive. Played ColecoVision cartridges. And the power supply was in the printer.
The power supply was in the printer.
The...power supply...was....in...the...printer
Innovate on THAT, Mr. Jobs!
local newspaper
The original comment is kind of amusing, but for the sake of accuracy I think I should point out that the Houston Chronicle is published in the 4th largest city in the US, and the largest city in the US with just one daily newspaper. My own bias says it might be the worst paper in the country- I've even gotten tired of explaining to the solicitors of free monthly trial subscriptions that they'd have to pay me, given the effort required to recycle it- but it's hardly a 'local paper'.
The Newton was a short-lived market failure.
The marketplace didn't kill the Newton, Steve Jobs did. Apple spun off the Newton into its own profitable company, but when Jobs came back he gave it the axe.
People who think the Palm was a Newton copy are nuts.
Copied, no, but many of the laid off Newton engineers went to work at Palm.
The real problem with the list was that the Newton was on it
Bzzt! The only problem with the Newtons is that there wasn't a low cost, compact consumer model. They didn't have time to try to make one. But a used Newton is still one of the most powerful PDA's you can have.
http://apple2history.org/museum/computers/a2clcd.h tml
Shaun Nelson - Bastard Operator (From Hell / For Hire)
Linus, is that you? By the way, I'm looking forward to 2.6.
Highly unlikely. Though Finnish by citizenship, by nationality Linus is actually Swedish.
and who could forget this? - dual CPU (in the 80's !!!) - Watcom APL and others (COBOL, FORTRAN, BASIC, Pascal) - 80x25 & 96k RAM
Mac devotes love to take credit for the introduction of the graphical interface despite the facts of the matter. 1) Apple didn't invent it. & 2) If anybody should get credit for introducing it to the masses, it should be Bill Gates.
this is such a lame response.
so what if the article is *local rag* article and the user responds about a vintage, dare I say limey computer . I've seen/read many a US home computer user talk of Sinclairs, Amigas, bbc or acorns.
How about, 'never saw one of those machines', 'yeah i remember those amiga machines playing kings quest 2' .... no we resort to argumentum ad hominem .
nb: moderators: dont feed the trolls - this article is neither informative nor worthy of points.
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
Anyway, I'll repeat my original Slashdot posting here (leaving out the Amiga, which he's now including) listing the missing machines that were influential in the US and UK in the last 25 years or so:
I have a soft-spot for the Archimedes - it was a ground-breaking PC in the late 80's: first machine in the mass-market to contain a 32-bit RISC processor and a highly impressive OS for the time (in ROM, so you could power up and start working in 2 seconds!).
I often would go to a friend's house and play on his family's computer and play games like Zork.
Unfortunately, it never went much further than that.
Man, even the gay slashdotters can't even get past 0th base. You should get in touch again.
you might have better success "shunning" him if you did it in a way that made you look more professional....
I love it when Dwight Silverman gets some free advertisement on /., but people have to stop treating these Top 10 list as religious edicts and bend with the wind. I'd like for Dwight Silverman to come up with a Top 20 Consumer Devices that changed the landscape, which will have to include the Palm Pilot.
Damn, I'm really really dating myself now...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Fuck you and your off topic moderation. It's comedy dammit!