Review of IBM's Original Personal Computer

illiteratehack was one of several readers to point out that today is the 30th anniversary of the introduction of IBM's first popular PC, writing, "V3 managed to dig up the original review of IBM's Personal Computer Model 5150, the machine that popularized personal computing. There are some great comments; the article's author wasn't sure if IBM would sell the PC outside the US, and he mentions the inclusion of a 'very high quality 11.5-inch' display. The article also shows that while the PC may have changed a lot on the inside, the way it was reviewed hasn't changed much in 30 years." Other readers sent in reflections on 30 years of the PC by various tech icons and a speculative look at what the computing industry would have looked like without IBM.

Comments

PCs quickly flooded the market? Yeah right.

[Anonymous Coward]

I really choked on the article when it said "The announcement of the PC was one of the most important moments in tech history, since computers based on the PC’s design quickly flooded the market and established a standard which lives on to this day in every Windows PC. "

Uh huh. This is the kind of drivel you get from someone who wasn't there. I remember the first, monochrome, IBM machines. They really were not that impressive, compared to the Big Three makers of 8-bit computers at the time: Commodore, Apple, and Radio Shack. Compared to those? Buy an IBM? No thanks. No thanks at all.

I remember the regret near the end of the 1980s -- nearly a full decade after the IBM PC was released -- when it was clear that those horrid 386 machines were slowly taking over. They just sucked compared to the Atari ST or the Commodore Amiga. The lack of true multitasking alone was a deal breaker for me.

Let's not forget the real reason the IBM PC won: Clones with Microsoft DOS (later Windows) were dirt cheap and plentiful. It hardly had anything to do with being a good computer architecture or a good OS.