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The 25 Greatest PCs of All Time
theodp writes "As the IBM PC turns 25, the editors of PC World present their list of The 25 Greatest PCs of All Time (IBM & others) and the rationale behind their picks. What, no IMSAI 8080?" And my favorite compaq luggable is missing too. Clearly this subjective and arbitrary list is subjective and arbitrary!
Where the hell is the.... Oh wait, there it is
Thank you.
Disclaimer: This comment is meant to be funny, please take it as such.
I wish that webpage with the article didn't have links with weird ads. On one hand I can see this is interesting but really, what are they measuring? It's very hard to say just that these are the best. I don't like this type of articles just listing top xx of everything listable. Maybe it's just me.
+1 Agree -1 Disagree
Let me guess... Toshiba sponsored this article?
Self built beige boxes must be the greatest PC's of all time because I've not owned anything else in over a decade.
The Commodore 64!
The Amiga 500!
A PC is by definition a Personal Computer.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
If the list is just 'personal computers' in the most general and literal sense rather than the generally accepted 'Wintel/IBM PC-compatibles' definition, then I'd also like to nominate:
:p
Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K
Psion Series 5
And yes, I am British. What gave it away?
You must think in Russian.
I have great memories of our Amstrad 1512, and if I remember it was the first decently priced, consumer accessible PC in the UK of course I have no sources to site this. However the use of GEM as an alternative to Windows and I remeber as a kid having some programs in magazines like PC Plus where you could play games in glourious 16 colours. Of course there was the posh kids who had the hard disk version.
rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
Well, that was a totally non politically-correct thing to say.
In the 80s, Apples and Commodore's were popular, but the IBM PC was one that truly brought the "modern" pc to all houses. Only middle/uppermiddle class and above bought a "computer" back then, but it was the IBM-PC (and later, the "100% compatibles") that truly brought PCs to every household...
I am surprised that none of the Amstrad range are mentioned. I would have expected to see either the PCW integrated wordprocessor or the IBM compatible PCs which were the first ones at 'consumer' rather than 'business' prices and in effect introduced the PC to the home user.
methinks someone has been listening a little too closely to the "I'm a mac" commercials..
a PC is by definition a Personal Computer. In common usage it's often used erraneously to specifically talk about IBM compatibles, but that's hardly the definition of the term.
Useless list.
No, an IBM compatible PC is, by definition, IBM compatible.
A PC is, by definition, a single user computer.
KFG
man i loved my compaq deskpro 386.. it was a later model other than the one shown i believe.. 16mhz.. with a special add-on 6mb rambus card, that was the entire width of the case.. it was indeed my favorite computer, and the computer that got me hooked on networking, BBS's, the first days of the residential internet access, and of course, good ol' fashion Apogee games and Creative Sound Blaster software like the talking parrot and Dr. Sbaitso..
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
No, you see, I'm Mac and a PC, because now you can run Mac OS and Windows at the same time. Touché
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I know everybody is going to complain that their personal favorite is missing, but I can't believe that NeXT isn't on the list. I think it was one of the most influential systems of the last twenty years. In addition to all the innovations with graphics, removable storage, onboard DSP, drag and drop e-mail attachments, object-oriented framework, etc., the first web browser was developed on a NeXT.
By my definition "personal computer" and "Personal Computer" have totally different meanings.
A "personal computer" is one intended for use by one person. A "Personal Computer" is one modelled on IBM's 5150 Personal Computer, and PC is an abbreviation of the latter usage. Generally for the first, I avoid the term altogether and use "home computer" instead, though some of those computers aren't really either. Perhaps "microcomputer" or just "micro" would be the better unambiguous term. Beside it's PC World, which I don't remember ever being devoted to anything but the Clones.
-uso.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
Subjective and arbitrary on /.? You must be new here.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
"And yes, I am British. What gave it away? :p"
The ability to spell.
Why is this on here? Lollipop-style colors for computers isn't necessarily a good thing, and those were god awful slow, even for powerpc architecture. I'd take a G3 any day.
By my definition "personal computer" and "Personal Computer" have totally different meanings.
I'm not responsible for your definitions. PC is simply an abbreviation for "personal computer" and that's the way IBM used it. IBM did not sell 5150 "PC"s. They sold "IBM PCs."
KFG
Its ironic that an Apple II is the greatest PC of all time
Ya know, I thought about making that joke, but decided it might be too lame. Thanks for confirming my suspicions ;)
After sifting through other comments and pondering it myself, I realize. Theres nothing Score 5 (Funny) about this article.
Good to see they didn't forget the Commodore Amiga.
What about the Macintosh? The first time I saw one I completely forgot why I was at this chicks house and spent the whole night playing on her brothers computer(instead of playing on her bed). If it could take my mind off breasts(hers were amazing) it could do anything.
I saw it in the pic, so it must be true, lol.
And to think 99er magazine was pushed out by PC World. At least they could have the decency to list the TI-99/4a. Considering it was one of the first to have Voice Synthesis, and expandable floppy drive, Multiple Programming language cartridges and still be a home computer. Let alone a 3 voice tone generator, which the "Real IBM PC's" didn't have.
Did Phoenix Wright submit this article or something?
The Mac Plus is on the list, specifically for the reason that it addressed the shortcomings that kept the original Mac off the list.
~Philly
I remember playing Bruce Lee and a ton of pirated games my parents bought for $1 a disk(all they were really worth).
It took us a while to find out: LOAD"*",8,1 or sometimes only LOAD"*",8
But once we unlocked all those games, it was a party time that finally broke the era of boring Atari 2600 games. Commodore rocked so hard. Then came Nintendo 8 bit which didn't entirely blow C64 out of the water, but was the 2nd biggest step in gaming, the first being Atari2600 or Colleco(from your vantage point) to C64.
I loved my c64 and would have kept it if someone didn't offer me $300 for it in 1993 when internet PCs were just starting to make it for the public.
God spoke to me.
It only enjoyed the success it did because it was made by IBM, so businesses snapped them up-- if not at first, then definitely after Lotus 1-2-3 appeared and give the machine its killer app.
I have never met anybody who owned one. Everyone I know who had a computer at home had a C64, an Apple, or a Trash 80.
~Philly
Many people who have read this wonder why the Commodore 64 and the VIC 20 were cut out. I think that the biggest excuse the authors may use is that those two machines were not breakthroughs in technology, but breakthroughs in affordability. I still believe that this is an incomplete argument though, especially in light of the huge popularity of the 64 and the resulting massive available software and reference rag libraries. In the United States, the 64 jump-started the home computing craze by being flexible enough to be a do-it-all machine: productivity suites, games and scientific tools were all available.
A friend who used to work at Lockheed told me how they once developed a communications bus that worked on the 64's parallel port and allowed the computers to be used as a multi-node supercomputer. They used the rig to calculate "safe" trajectories and orientations for a stealth fighter jet when flying through hostile radar zones. They bought the machines at Toys R Us.
The amazing folding keyboard - how could they resist?
I am surprised they mentioned the Columbia. That was the first PC I actually used at work. I remember that it came with PC/DOS 1.something, CPM/86, and the USCD P-System. It was nice having that huge hard drive, but the best thing that happened was when MS/DOS 2.01 came out (I think that is the correct version) and introduced the concept of sub-directories. No more having a 20Mb floppy with no organization. It also had some software that came with it - perfect-filer and others. Anyone know if that had anything to do with the later Word Perfect?
Absolutely correct - for more information about this (as well as some ludicrous & funny definitions of PC in the comments), please see my journal: Why is Apple afraid of being PC?
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
I learned everything on that little guy. Kyan Pascal. Deep Blue C. Action! (a C-like language tight enough to write side scrolling shooters in) Atari Basic and later a version of BASIC that would compile to machine code for decent speed (QuickBASIC???). 6502 assembler. Even FORTRAN and Forth.
Christ on a cracker, I feel old. :(
...then why aren't we doing this list on Apple II's birthday?
Where's the p-p-p-powerbook?
I'm not fat, just big boned...
"Apple ][? iMac? Kaypro? TRS-80? Half these things aren't even PCs, because a PC is by definition IBM-compatible."
I would have modded this -.5 Naieve instead of Troll. Oh well.
In the olden days, what we call PCs were called IBM Clones. Everything else was called PC in some form or another. (As memory serves, it was usually spelled out as 'personal computer'.) Over time, x86 machines took over and marketshares for everything else were in the single digits. The term PC, by de-facto, became 'a Windows machine using an Intel or AMD processor'. I'm not saying the definition was/is super-strict, (Linux boxes have been called PCs, for example...) but when you see mags like PC Gamer, you start building a new impression of what PC commonly refers to.
What parent poster is saying isn't totally false. We've all heard of Mac vs. 'PC' debates. I don't think the current generation is as aware of why the PC distinction took place originally. Back in the olden days, a computer occupied a huge room and only the gov't or big corps had them. Maybe I'm being a little dramatic here, but the reason my definition of PC changed was because I've been reading a lot of Asimov. His stories were rather vague about people having their own computers, but there was always some big major computer (Multivac) that everything was centralized to. It wasn't until.. what.. the 70's until people actually had significant computing power in their homes.
I think we should cut the guy a little slack. It probably would have been a little clearer if the title had said Personal Computers instead of PCs. (Though I'll grant that his post was superficially nitpicky.)
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
It isn't in any way erroneous if it's - as you said - common usage. Usage defines definition.
In our closet^H^H^H^H^H^H new museum.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Well, the Xerox Star (aka 8010) isn't a personal computer by any stretch of the imagination, and it made the list. In fact, Wikipedia claims that a small workgroup (2 or 3 machines, file server, printer) outfitted with Xerox Star-era hardware would have costed 50 to 100 thousand dollars. The Star seems to be pretty much the grandaddy of all "workstations."
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I always wondered why the Mac was considered the "gay" computer.
My understanding, and I would love an authoritative source on the matter, is that Ed Roberts was the first to use the term "Personal Computer" to describe the Altair. So "personal computer" predates the "IBM Personal Computer" by six years.
As the article states, there is plenty of debate over whether the Altair was the first personal computer, but most of that debate isn't arguing whether or not an earlier computer was called a "personal computer" but rather whether or not it took the role of a personal computer. (i.e. a computer used by a single person)
No Commodore 64? The best-selling microcomputer ever? The machine that probably launcher more nerds' careers (mine included) than anything else?
Yeah, I think this list is pretty much bullshit.
--saint
Thx. You just approved my Portable Workstation (homemade) sticker on my ThinkPad... it runs Linux and is a multiuser system.
;-)
--
This space for rent... pls. contact A.C.
Come on people let's see your lists, and please give a short reason why you choose each, eh.
For me (a Canadian) I have to say that the PET 2001, Atari 400, Amiga 500, and Sinclair ZX81 had the biggest infulence on me at home; at collage it was the DEC Rainbow, Apple II, and then the IBM compatables; at university is was all Mac, i386's, and Digital UNIX boxes.
1. Sinclair ZX81 / Timex 1000 - Cheapest computer I could buy.
2. Commodore P.E.T. 2001 - My first computer that didn't feel like a toy.
3. Atari 400 - Felt like a toy, but it did colour! Did more than the Vic-20.
4. Amiga 500 - Games with beautiful sound.
5. Apple II - These were everywhere in school.
6. DEC Rainbow - These were both stand alone and networked, did CP/M and DOS.
7. i386's - Wow I can compile Borland Pascal in seconds, not minutes.
8. Mac - Pretty display... but how do I run my own code.
9. Digital - You can do what... over several clients... with UNIX - wow!
10. i486 - A cheap UNIX box by using Linux (0.87)!
--
Peace and Long Life,
KnightFire
Well hell, Intelligent Design is a bonafide theory, then.
. . .my ThinkPad... it runs Linux and is a multiuser system.
How many users are logged in?
KFG
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
There sure are quite a few Apple computers on there; however, I am quite surprised the original Macintosh from 1984 isn't listed. At least the plus is on there. I am still trying to figure out why the 2006 Toshiba laptop is on there, but alas, there will always be choices that are disagreeable.
While the C-64 should top the list for the simple fact of it being EVERYWHERE and cheap! The SX-64 was a cute lil' luggable with it's 5" square screen!!!
"It's an imperfect world,screws fall out..."
OK. Sp Apple's emate is on this list, which is very cool. The emate is essentially an MP2100 Newton screen, in a clamshell with a built-in keyboard. The processor is a little different between the 2100 and the emate, but they're both arch compatible. Anyway, what matters is not the chip, but the user and programming environment. Due to the recent /. discussion on the Q1 vs. MP 2100 article, I ebayed myself a newton out of curiosity. It *IS* pretty amazing. And *awfully* slow. I mean horribly slow. Newt's Cape (web browser) can take over ten minutes rendering cnn.com in *plain text*! In comparison, my trusty old 386sx/16 from 1990 used to browse the net with lynx no trouble. Real fast.
This is not to insult the Newton dev team. The Newton was never intended to browse the net anyway, and never had any internal acceleration for text manipulation and rendering. And the environment - whoa. It's the prettiest thing since LMI and Symbolics. NewtonScript is an ease to hack. If you care you can code up c++ snippets and call them from within Newtonscript. So, you can write fast stuff - but you're still limited to NewtonScript to interact with the OS for drawing and datebase access (no filesystem, a relational db for data storage instead). Actually, I bet the relational db is part of why the Newton is so slow too.
The Newton has a lot to teach for UI consistency and streamlined design. It really was a beautiful product. I look at Squeak and think: THAT should be the next Newton. Not Gnome, KDE, or Windows XP Tablet edition (Never mind CE). *sigh*
Want to have fun? Check out Einstein, a Newton emulator for MacOS X and Linux/ARM: You'll have to use your nefarious hax0r sk11z too find a Newton ROM and then you too can learn 'bout the Newton (and emate) without having to ebay one.
This a preposterously technically flawed list. Before the IBM PC came out all "PC's" were actually called Micro Computers (shortened to the character mu followed by a p). Therefore, no Apples. Amiga's, Atari's, Sinclair's, or other makes, unless emulating the IBM, were ever strictly PC's. The term Personal Computer just didn't exist prior to IBMs release of that god awful expensive piece of junk.
It almost always is left off lists like these (thanks to them being US centric). But in the UK, where I lived at the time of its launch, and even here in Australia, the Spectrum was a landmark computer.
:)
And the one I learnt to program on!
It makes me nuts when a company like PC World can't get this stuff right. The IBM XT did NOT use an 8086 CPU. IT was an 8088 just like the PC. The only differnec in the two machines was a larger power supply (130 Watts) to accomodate a hard drive and 3 more slots (8 total). This was done by placing the slots closer togther as the machines were indentical in size. Funny thing this machine set the slot spacing for all the machines that came after it. Even the most modern machines still have the same spacing.
Even though I owned an Atari 800XL, I have to say that the C= 64 was more influential. For every one 800XL owner, there were three C= 64 owners. I got the C= 128D and then an Amiga (500, 2000, and 3000/UX). Too bad Commodore had governership of it. BTW, the CDTV was SOOOOO schweeet!.... So ahead of it's time. But you know what they say about spilt milk.
Some early Macs that should have made the list:
Lisa, not a Mac, but it set the stage for what was to come.
Mac 128KB - the first affordable, successful all-GUI machine.
Mac Classic - if only for the bootable ROM-disk.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Fine, fine machines those Packard Bells were. And by 'fine' I mean 'train wreck'.
I was fortunate to live near a Xerox campus in the 1980s. The techs would go to a customer site, diagnose Xerox Star problems down to th FRU (which was typically an entire board), replace said FRU, then dump the 'bad' boards in a giant bin. Once a month you could go to the Xerox field service office and buy stuff out of the bin for a buck a board. I and my friends built several CP/M boxes out of these boards (they were mostly Z80 based) complete with 8" floppies. I remember that one of mine had a fancy switching power supply mounted with rubber bands and toothpicks, and a voice synthesizer built up from Radio Shack parts hangng off of a parallel port. That's back when home comuting was actually interesting...
I was fortunate to live near a Xerox campus in the 1980s. The techs would go to a customer site, diagnose Xerox Star problems down to th FRU (which was typically an entire board), replace said FRU, then dump the 'bad' boards in a giant bin. Once a month you could go to the Xerox field service office and buy stuff out of the bin for a buck a board. I and my friends built several CP/M boxes out of these boards (they were mostly Z80 based) complete with 8" floppies. I remember that one of mine had a fancy switching power supply mounted with rubber bands and toothpicks, and a voice synthesizer built up from Radio Shack parts hangng off of a parallel port. That's back when home computing was actually interesting...
Yes, it is. Always has been. Just like the evolution theory.
A theory is any idea you can come up with, a theorem is an idea that has been proved correct.
http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=theory
S: (n) theory (a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world; an organized system of accepted knowledge that applies in a variety of circumstances to explain a specific set of phenomena) "theories can incorporate facts and laws and tested hypotheses"; "true in fact and theory"
I.D. is not testable, and is thus not a scientific theory. I figured some douchebag would use the "a theory is just an idea" nonsense that the ID-lovers like to spout.
Those things had the PLCC'd 25mhz 486SLC (SlowLousyComputer) chip... Closer to a 386 than a 486. Yuck.
Mommy. What's a karma whore?
In the 80s, Apples and Commodore's were popular, but the IBM PC was one that truly brought the "modern" pc to all houses.
I don't know where you're coming from, any Amiga I owned in the 80 could smoke any IBM in the same timeframe for about a quarter of the price. The first time I was truly impressed with an x86 PC over an Amiga wasn't until a few years after CBM went belly up.
Only middle/uppermiddle class and above bought a "computer" back then, but it was the IBM-PC (and later, the "100% compatibles") that truly brought PCs to every household...
I know of VERY few homes that had IBMs over CBMs, Macs or Ataris before the Internet made headway in the 90s. Sure, most went over before than but still these were old CBM users switching over who never seemed to catch onto the Amiga.
In any case CBM was in far more homes, pre-internet, than any x86, IIRC.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
They left out my favorite: the Macintosh IIci.
Small, lightweight, stylish, powerful for its time, and easier to get into its case than any computer I've seen before or since.
Man i always liked My Ti99 i would think that make the cut :(
The PGA graphcis "card" was actually a multi-card assembly. It took up two 16-bit PC/AT slots, on two full-length cards and one half-length card all joined with headers, standoffs and some ribbon cable. That's 2.5 full-length cards. It had graphics roughly equivalent to what would become EGA, but it was not EGA compatible. For most programs, it defaulted to the CGA mode for graphics. I found only one program (Generic CADD) that supported the "high-res" color. I assume that it was intended for that sort of work.
And it had ROM BASIC. I found this out the day the hard drive died, and it booted to ROM!
I guess the moral of the story is: pound for pound, IBM made the heaviest business personal computers of the era.
I am not a crackpot.
Not by definition, by designation. The OP is correct. PCs were and are all descendents of the original IMB PC and compatibles. Before that, these machines were called microcomputers. They are not PCs.
So far as I know, it was the first true laptop. Tiny LCD screen, not much RAM, but plenty battery life for anyone who wrote for a living. I wish I had bought one when they were available. Unfortunately, at the time I was scrambling to pay for tuition and food. :(
But what does IBM Compatible mean? Is it any personal size computer that implements the x86 ISA? Well, the Intel Macs would fit that description. What about the ability to run Windows/DOS? The Intel Macs can run Windows too and even the PowerPC models can run Windows with virtualization. The only aspect of the Mac hardware which makes them less IBM Compatible is the lack of a BIOS, and I don't think people are going to stop calling their Dells and HPs PCs once they switch to EFI too.
Olden days?? Everything else was called PC?? Let me guess, you were born until the 80s were you? They were not calls PCs in the "olden days." They were calls microcomputers, or just micros for short. Kids...
Nice to see this machine on the list. I carried one around the country for about 18 months. Wrote trip reports, meeting notes, etc. Tracked expenses. Had BASIC programs that downloaded error logs from a bunch of custom test equipment over the serial link. And it did have one of the nicer keyboards I've ever used.
So it is correct for me to say "I should of gone to the store" because that's common usage?
...is the choice of model. The 600 series Thinkpad, released at the height of the Dot-Com Boom, has got to be the epitome of Thinkpad-dom. It was light, (5 pounds!) it was versatile, it could run as a "3 spindle machine" (HD, Optical and Floppy) if you put the Floppy Drive in an external case that connected to a proprietary connector by a cable. During the Dot-Com Boom, the 600 series Thinkpad was a status symbol. It was the laptop the Big Dogs carried, unless they were Mac fans in which case they'd have a "Wallstreet" PowerBook.
The 600 series was the first to have official instructions on the IBM website on how to install Linux. (Red Hat, for the curious.) There was always a problem with the quirky sound chip, and it took IBM years to put out a driver (F/OSS, to their credit) for the MWave modem chip. Red Hat actually "certified" the 600 series Thinkpad, in spite of those problems.
The 600 "DNA" was transfered to the T series of Thinkpads, a series still in continued manufacture by Lenovo. Whether the T60 is a worthy member of the line is something the jury's still out on, but the T4x series remain classics.
Yes, the 700C was first. The 701C with its "butterfly keyboard" had more panache, and might have been a better choice for the Thinkpad niche. But the 600 series would have been the best choice of all, because it's the beginning of a continuum of perhaps the "best of the best" of the whole line.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
I agree that the notebooks on this list represent some of the more notable inflection points in the PC industry. However, I refuse to believe that a 10 pound notebook made in 2006 is on the top 25 of all time. Can anyone explain to me why I should be astounded by the Toshiba?
I seem to remember the Epson Hx-20 being released firsrt.... could be wrong tho...
Huh???
Would somebody mention the Coleco so I can say how "they'll rust up on you like that."
Most of entries in this list are not PC. Microcomputers are not PC. There is only one true PC, the IBM compatible PC and Bill Gates is its prophet, come to see the light! I am very happy that the one and true IBM PC compatible faith destroyed the many heretic and infidel microcomputing sects and now everybody congregates under the true x86 religion. Even the pagan appleanists gave up eventually and joined the IBM-compatible x86 PC community, blessed be the grey box, the great PC computer we adore! Your computer case shell be of no other color but grey, say the all-mighty! Hear!
It is blasphemy to list heretic and pagan microcmputers in the list of greatest PC. I will issue a fatwah against the author of the article, because he is an enemy of the greybox-kind. Repent or we will format him!
The IBM compatible PC is the greatest ever invention of mankind, way above wheel, fire or alphabet. IBM compatible PC destroyed world communism, IBM compatible PC gave the Net to masses, IBM compatible PC holds the world economy together, blessed its name be!
This list is indeed very US-centric. And OK, there's nothing inherently wrong with that, being as it's a US site and everything, but there is something missing from this list.
In the UK in the late 70's and early 80's a very different computing buzz was going on, so I'd like to mention the claims of two other machines: the BBC Micro and the Sinclair ZX Spectrum.
The Spectrum was the machine (even more than the ZX80 and 81 before it) that switched lots of kids of my generation onto computing. And it's why, to this day, we have some of the best programmers, developers (and games people) in the world. It may not have had the graphics and audio power of the C64, but it took ingenuity to squeeze perfomance out of Uncle Clive's little rubber keyed wonder. A huge kitechen sink games market grew up around the Spectrum and many of us learned to program on it.
The BBC Micro was damn near ubiquitous in British schoools in the 1980's and is probably the one thing about Margaret Thatcher's time in office that she called absolutely correctly: the need to get computers into schools. Sincalir came very close to winning the contract to supply BBC-badged computers to put into our schools (as apart of an initiative to introduce home computing to the masses), but in the end Acorn (later to become ARM) got the nod. For the time, the Beeb was a pretty powerful and expandable machine, with probably the best version of BASIC on the market.
Both of these machines helped to kick start computing in the UK, but never really made it across the pond (though the Speccy was badged as a Timex sinclair and sold in the states). A whole generation of kids used the Beeb at school and came home ot a spectrum (the best seller here). Before the IBM ear, these were the machines that defined home comuting in the UK.
It's not you: I'm just this horrifically socially awkward with everybody.
In the olden days, what we call PCs were called IBM Clones. Everything else was called PC in some form or another.
;), etc.
This isn't the way I remember it. I remember calling the class of machines microcomputers, and the Personal Computer was IBM's brand. Compaq and company were indeed called clones and/or compatibles. By the mid-to-late-eighties, it became common to refer to compatibles even as PCs. In fact, people would have arguments about which was better: PCs or Macs, PCs or Amigas.
Calling the class PC's I think is an example of a brand name coming into colloquial usage, a bit like "Kleenex" for any tissue, Band-Aid for a (what the hell is the generic name for a Band-Aid?!?
Ah come on. No mention of Rainbow nor VAXmate in the top 25? Rainbow was years ahead of its time. (Too bad it was compatible with nothing.) And I'm still convinced that the VAXmate was the inspiration for the lastest round of all-in-1 MAC desktops. An who could forget the venerable PRO 350? A PC which could run a mini-computer's OS?
I had a Pro350 at one point. Lovely machine, and if DEC hadn't had it's head up its hind-quarters (floppies you couldn't format yourself, unescapable idiot-proof shell rather than RSX-11), it would have had a good shot at becoming the standard. The WYSIWYG wordprocessor with the ability to embed graphics from other apps, at a time when WordStar, DisplayWrite, and WordPervert were the standards on the other side, was simply amazing. The only bad thing I remember about the PRO was that it was almost as heavy as a PC-RT. Not an issue if you never move, but bad if you do.
The VAXMates were cute, but I can't understand the nostalgia for the Rainbows. They were well-built, overengineered (or as my VAX-centric friends put it, correctly engineered as opposed to slapped together by drunken monkeys), machines. But they didn't have the software and power of the Pro series, or the general purpose utility of real CP/M or DOS computers.
the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
Is the IBM RS/6000 IBM compatible?
I used to work as an Apple Campus Rep. when I was in college and my boss recounted a funny story one day.
... at least it is funny to me. :-P
It seems that, during the PowerPC heydays, they were visiting the R&D shop at IBM and they noticed an Apple laptop sitting next to a ThinkPad and one of the visiting Apple engineers commented that there was more IBM technology in the Apple laptop than in the ThinkPad.
Well
PC? Politically-correct? Wasn't too hard to figure out .. I thought it worth a Funny modpoint, but whatever.
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
You're confusing grammar with definition, and being an ass besides.
Like most everyone in this thread, I agree this list is null and void because there is not even a mention of the most important computer ever, the C64.
Its so sad that the Zaurus c3x00 models have never been released outside Japan because this is the best 'PC' yet. I'm very lucky indeed to have one in the UK.The Zaurus was the first PDA to have a VGA screen, internal hard disc and USB host was a first too I think. Other PDA's are toys in comparison. I can run Firefox, amule, mplayer, gaim, MAME, zpsx (a Zaurus Playstation emulator), apache, gnumeric, abiword... try doing all that on your WinCE'y toy! It is the new benchmark to beat for portable (future) computing. The cxxxx Zaurii are the coolest computers since the Amiga!
The list also forgot Sharp's Amiga killer, the x68000. It was as powerful as most arcades from the early/mid 90's with arcade perfect conversions of stuff like Super Street Fighter II. It wasn't until the 486 came out that PCs caught up with the power of this machine which came out in the mid 80's!
SGI in particular has had innovative and stylish desktop workstations for decades. Ridiculously powerful for their time, there are some performance aspects that computers 10 years later are just managing to catch up with. The 3D card on your desktop is likely built off technology from SGI's high end graphics workstations of yesteryear.
You'd think that there'd at least be a place for one of the IRIS, Indy, Indigo, O2 or Octane somewhere on that list.
you're confusing "market share" with innovation - what exactly did the IBM PC bring to the table? About the only innovation was using all off the shelf parts rather than a mix of off the shelf and in-house parts. I could argue the Disk ][ was more innovative.
The IBM PC was marketed as a business machine and sold mostly to businesses because IBM was the definition of business computing at that time. It wasn't really popular as a home computer until later, so you can't even say it brought the PC to most houses - everyone I knew had a Apple, trash-80 or Vic 20 at home (and later C64). I honestly don't remember even seeing a 5150 (the first model IBM) in any house, though I did see one at my dad's office. Even my tech-nut uncle, an electrician by trade, didn't have one, and he had an Altair and several other kit computers, a PET, Vic 20, and TRS-80 - his first PC was an AT (a 286).
Oddly enough, I remember the 5150 number because I disliked the Van Halen album by that title (the first with Sammy Hagar), not by the computer, although the naming is unrelated (VH is named after the studio address where the album was recorded).
You should have told Apple this before they ran the "Welcome IBM, Seriously" ad. The ad welcomes IBM to the "personal computer" market in 1984.
Nothing beat my Mattel Aquarius and my catridge of Utopia, aka Civ 5.
I had one with the "SuperRom" chip. The spread sheet application was outstanding.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
I knew lots of people that had 5150s at home, in the early 80s.
:-)
Of course, I lived in Endicott, NY(1), at the time.
I still had my Apple ][+ which I felt was superior.
(1) For those that don't know, IBM started in Endicott, NY and employed, in the early 80s, somewhere in the neighborhood of 5% of the *total* population (not working population) of the area.