IBM PC is 30 years-old – Is PC era over?
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IBM PC 5150 was launched in 1981
although not first PC
it established standards and design
The introduction of the IBM PC 5150 was a defining moment for the fledgling computer business. Once IBM entered the market with a system running the Microsoft Disk Operating System, MS-DOS, the industry really began to realize the dream of a PC on every desk and in every home.
Although the IBM PC was not the first, the Apple II; the Commodore PET; the Osborne 1 and the Tandy TRS-80 all preceded it, the 5150 established standards and design that many desktops still use today.
The IBM PC 5150 – The first PC that was useful to everyone
It wasn’t that long before the August 1981 debut of the IBM PC that an IBM computer often cost as much as $9 million and required an air-conditioned quarter-acre of space and 60 people to run and keep it loaded with instructions.
The IBM PC changed all that. It was a very small machine that could not only process information faster than those ponderous mainframes of the 1960s but also hook up to the home TV set, process text and store more words than a huge cookbook – all for a price tag of less than $1,600.
Engineer who worked on first IBM PC, thinks PC era is over
Dr Mark Dean, one the engineers who helped the design first IBM PC, says are PCs are no longer the leading edge of computing.
No single device has taken the PC’s place, he said, instead it has been replaced by the socially-mediated innovation it has fostered.
“When I helped design the PC, I didn’t think I’d live long enough to witness its decline,” wrote Dr Dean, an IBM engineer who worked on the development of the 5150 and owns three of the nine patents for it. He revealed that he had already moved into the post-PC era as his primary computer was now a tablet.
“It’s becoming clear that innovation flourishes best not on devices but in the social spaces between them, where people and ideas meet and interact,” he wrote. Read Dr. Dean’s blog HERE
He added: “It is there that computing can have the most powerful impact on economy, society and people’s lives.”
More than 400 million personal computers are set to be sold in 2011.
Dr. Mark Dean helped design the first IBM PC, launched 30 years ago this week
Computers have become such an integral part of our lives, hard to imagine living without them. My first computer was Commodore 64. Hard to believe it was only 30 years ago since the first IBM PC.
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Wow, wonderful blog layout! How long have you ever been blogging for? you make running a blog look easy. The full look of your website is magnificent, let alone the content material!
The IBM PC established nothing. BTW: It first ran on DOS, not MS-DOS.
The machine that set the standard and changed computing forever was the Apple Macintosh. It was introduced in 1983 after the similar Apple Lisa. The IBM PC was always an overpriced, bug infested POS. The Mac was the first popular WYSIWYG operating system. It is still the gold standard that all others are judged by and Microsoft Windows still falls woefully short.
My little brother and I had a Commodore 64 in the mid 80’s. My brother, the whiz, got an external modem with it, then ran some software on his Commodore that he got online from someone in Germany and got himself in a lot of trouble with the FBI and our local juvenile system as a result. I have a PC at my office, an iMac at home, and wonder when I’ll add a tablet to my arsenal of computational power.
I can tell you that the PC era should be over because in my experience most of them are crap. I became a Mac Friend a number of years ago and would never consider owing a PC again.