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."

Comments

I think the problem here is...

[Chordonblue]

...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.

Macintosh?

[Isopropyl]

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?

Re:Macintosh?

[justMichael]

While I completely agree with you.

Maybe it's possible that many people voted for the Mac even though they do not own one? I know I have seen many people here and in person that would be happy to own an Apple if the perceived* cost wasn't so high.

On the other hand, I can easily see a hand full of zealots inflating the numbers.

*perceived because most people only look at the initial cost and don't factor in the fact that there are many people using 5+ year old Macs on a daily basis.

iMac

[quantaman]

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.

Re:iMac

[Clever Pun]

I'd have to agree. The iMac had influence even beyond the field of computers - at the Target store I work at (general merchandise retailer, for you non-Americans :), we sell colored irons, grills, glasses, and everything else you can think of.

The iMac also helped to jumpstart the USB industry by only having USB ports - thus creating demand for USB floppy drives (which had the biggest demand by a HUGE margin), printers, keyboards, mice, and joysticks.

Re:iMac

[swb]

The problem with the iMac is that while it may have helped Apple, that doesn't add anything (or take anything away) from the technology aspect of it. As it stands, the only thing remarkable from a computing perspective about the iMac was its all-in-one design, and even more so the decision to not include a floppy drive.

The all-in-one aspect has been done ad nauseum since the dawn of personal computing -- everything Mac until the II, the Kaypro, and many others I'm probably forgetting, and omitting the floppy seems less important now than it did at the time.

I think what would have been a really revolutionary computer would have been a Macintosh SE/30 with a color display. The SE/30 was one of my all-time faves; internal HDD, 68030 CPU (although slightly hobbled with a 16 bit data path), and highly portable. Until the Powerbook line, it was Apple's best portable computer.

I'd love to see an SE/30 modded with a hi-res LCD color display. I dunno if the ROMs supported color or not, but that would have been sweet in 1990.

Re:iMac

[sugar and acid]

Except one thing, iMacs broke the beige barrier.

Before iMac the colour choice for your computer was along the line of, beige, off white or ivory (ie all shades of beige). iMac comes along, and all of a sudden you can buy a personal computer that isn't beige. All major PC manufactures have almost stop making beige computers (though now the new beige is black).

The iMac showed people wanted good looking computers on there desk, and for many people the computer is just like a couch or a table or even a toaster, where the purchase decision is based on both practicality and asthetics.

List looks good now

[Teddy Beartuzzi]

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.

It's the Hardware, not the OS

[FunWithHeadlines]

From that list, it appears he chose based on the hardware itself, and it's popularity, with the OS coming along for the ride. Why else pick the IBM PC 5150 as #2, running DOS? Clearly because it was very popular and helped turn the PC market toward the business world in an unprecedented way.

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.

Couple of corrections with comments

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Early PCs had completely different demographic

[mabu]

I also got several votes for the Texas Instruments 99/4A. These seemed to come largely from people who identified themselves as programmers, which is one reason I didn't put it on the list. It was a bigger influence on the geek community than on Joe & Jane User.

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.

Amiga Placement

[retsamxaw]

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:

• pre-emptive multitasking
• CLI/GUI mix
• true-color graphics
• stereo sound
• co-processing
• animation

  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.

taking the bait: comments on "the list"

[mabu]

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.

What a wuss....

[telstar]

So he writes an article ... gets a bunch of pseudo-hate-mail from people that disagree, then goes back and "fixes" his list?

If my "system of choice" had made the original 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.

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 ... 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!