IBM Puts PC Business Up for Sale

valdean writes "When I was growing up (in the 80s), there were two kinds of computers that my friends (or, more specifically, our parents) had at home: Apple and the IBM-Compatible. IBM defined the PC at that time, and deserves a large share of credit for taking the PC out of the hobby shop and into the mainstream. Now it looks like IBM is getting out of the PC business altogether. CBS Marketwatch has another report."

Comments

Makes sense

[magefile]

They're not good at it anymore - desktop-wise, at least. You can get a superior computer from Dell/Compaq/etc, and it'll be cheaper, even after the 5% employee discount (from personal experience).

...and announces the Power Alliance

[turgid]

Maybe it has something to do with the Power Chip Alliance they announced the other day?

One goal of the alliance is to make Power chips used in high volumes. IBM has shipped more than 1 million PowerPC 970 chips, it said. The more widely used the Power processors are, however, the more directly they compete against the dominant x86 family such as Intel's Pentium and Advanced Micro Devices' Opteron.

Look out Wintel! Look out Sun?

IBM's motto or slogan or whatever was "Think"

[HWheel]

Throughout the 60's and 70's, IBM was famous for their "Think" motto. Apparently that's missed by a lot of youngsters today, but that's why they're called "ThinkPads," I believe.

Re:Who would have guessed...

[TheRaven64]

Umm, your post is almost exactly 100% wrong. The original IBM PC was based on the 8088, a proprietary CPU manufactured by Intel. 8088 compatible chips were also available from AMD because IBM (I think - it may have been someone else) refused to buy from Intel without a second source. This made the chip no less proprietary. Most of the hardware in the PC was off-the-shelf (it was a rush-to-market job). The only thing made by IBM was the BIOS, which they refused to license. Eventually, clones appeared with reverse-engineered BIOSes, but not with the blessing of IBM.

In contrast, the PowerPC is based on an open specification jointly developed by Apple, IBM and Motorola (AIM). PowerPC chips are actively developed by both IBM and Motorola, although Apple does provide some input to the design teams, at least at IBM (for example, the Altivec/VMX capability on IBM's PowerPC 970 was added at Apple's request). Anyone can create a PowerPC based system. The Common Hardware Reference Platform (CHRP) defined by the AIM group specifies the firmware interface (Open Firmware - used in Sun, Apple and IBM hardware. An open specification, unlike the PC BIOS which had to be reverse engineered for compatibility) as well as the CPU, making it every easy to build PowerPC systems.

You can blame them for the US's voting mess

[DABANSHEE]

IBM & other business machines firms of the 19th century owed the US census for their existence, but that market wasn't big enough for them, so they lobby state legislators & county managers to introduce voting machines, leading up to the mess we have today of even single states having a dozen different types of machines.

But for them the US would still have the most simplest user friendly & quickest system of the lot - hand counted 'tick the box' plain paper ballots, like most of the rest of the western world. Although in many other places its the 'number the boxes in order of preferance' preferential varient, like here in Oz. But even having to number all the boxes in the huge upper house (Senate) ballot it still only takes me 20 minutes to vote, & that includes driving to the local school, parking, queueing up, voting, buying a BBQ sausage & onion sanga from the parents raising money from the school on the way out, & driving home. Bugger spending 30 minutes to 6 hours in a queue & then having to buggerise arround with bloody levers & punchcards, like they do in the US. No wonder most Americans can't be bothered voting. Compare that with Oz where some 90% of those legible are registed & over 98% vote (contrary to popular belief it's not compulsary for adults to register to vote in Oz & it's not comulsary for those that are registed to actually vote either. It's just compulsary for those that are registed to turnup to vote, IE get their names crossed off. Once one has one's name crossed off one need not vote if one doesn't want to). Yet even with attendence figures more than double the US, it's still only take some 20 minutes for some 90% of Australians to vote, including travelling & parking time.