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12th August 2001 |
THE PC'S 20TH BIRTHDAY |
Brian Grainger |
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There has not been much news on these pages recently. That is because I have not found much new to write about. Basically it has been Dotcom gloom, followed by Tech gloom, followed by Office/Windows XP gloom! Today is different. Today marks the 20th anniversary of the introduction of the IBM PC and the world of business changed for evermore. No longer was the number one excuse, 'the letter is in the post'. Now it was, 'there is a fault with the computer', followed in the mid nineties by 'the network is down'. Back on August 12th 1981, IBM provided a machine with an Intel 8088 processor, (16 bit processing with an 8 bit bus), with 64KB of memory and dual floppy drives for just under $2700, (£1900 at today's exchange rate). It legitimised the PC in business and consigned all the other PCs around at the time to niche markets, (Apple or Commodore), or oblivion (what ever happened to CP/M?). It also legitimised Microsoft, who gave it the MSDOS operating system after buying it from Seattle Computer Products where it was known as QDOS, (quick and dirty operating system). Bill Gates paid $50,000 for QDOS. It was probably the best $50,000 he spent! Not long afterwards the top selling software for the IBM PC was the spreadsheet Lotus 1-2-3, developed by someone other than Microsoft! I think it is kind of appropriate that on this 20th anniversary there are serious doubts about the future of PCs. We have had profit warnings from many major companies, including Dell; PC sales have shrunk this quarter for the first time ever; most recently, Gateway are upping sticks and pulling out of the UK. Can it be that in 20 years we have now got machines that are powerful enough for what we want to do? Well no, but in 20 years we still haven't solved the problem of reliable speech input yet! Here are a couple of ideas for all you PC makers that would really help me buy a new PC: Can I have a display device that will display a full A4 page, at a resolution I can read with a quality equivalent to reading paper, capable of swivelling between portrait and landscape mode and at a cost of a current 17 inch monitor. Even the first requirement would be a big step forward! Can I have a laptop with that silly mouse pad, which gets in the way while typing, replaced by a pointing device that is as precise as a mouse but takes up no space. Here's hoping the PC reaches its coming of age party! |
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