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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!
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?
The Commodore 64!
The Amiga 500!
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.
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...
No Commodore 8-bits, even though they reached critical mass in the United States. No Sinclairs, even though they reached critical mass in the UK. But a 6-month old Toshiba makes the list because it has an HD-DVD drive that almost nobody can use today?
Yeah, I agree with another poster: This Top 25 list was brought to you by Toshiba.
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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.
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. :(
"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)
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)
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
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)
Another great one that is missing is the Timex/Sinclar 1000, a $99 machine with 1k of RAM.
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.