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more on Twenty five years of the IBM PC
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2006 14:47:20 -0400
Begin forwarded message: From: Mary Shaw <mary.shaw () gmail com> Date: August 11, 2006 2:26:44 PM EDT To: dave () farber net Subject: Re: [IP] more on Twenty five years of the IBM PC Dave,Even back when it came out, I figured that the most valuable part of the IBM PC was the logo on the chassis.
Yes, lots of other computers preceded it. And you could replace virtually all the components with third-party alternatives.
What the IBM PC did, though, was create a viable marketplace. The IBM logo meant a commitment to a product that would still be there in a couple of years, which gave third-party component producers some assurance of a real market for products and therefore the incentive to create the third-party products.
Mary On 8/11/06, David Farber <dave () farber net> wrote: Begin forwarded message: From: Jim DeLong <jdelong () pff org> Date: August 11, 2006 11:44:58 AM EDT To: dave () farber net, ip () v2 listbox com Subject: RE: [IP] Twenty five years of the IBM PC The IBM PCmay have made business history, but it did not make technological history. Even leaving aside the Apple and the NorthStar, by 1981 there were numerous CP/M machines (I actually owned a brown-case Osbourne), most of which were regarded as superior to the initial IBM. At first, the CP/Mers were jubilant, regarding the IBM as unimpressive and over-priced, but of course the IBM name carried the day with business. Then people reverse engineered the IBM chip, the clone was born, the CP/M guys went broke, and Bill Gates got rich with MS-DOS, which was a CP/M variant. CP/M -- Ave atque sale. But the history should be kept straight. . Cheers, James V. DeLong Senior Fellow & Director -- IPCentral.Info Progress & Freedom Foundation 1444 Eye St., NW -- Suite 500 Washington, DC 20005 202-969-2944 Direct 202-289-8928 Main 202-302-5827 Cell jdelong () pff org www.IPcentral.Info www.pff.org -----Original Message----- From: David Farber [mailto:dave () farber net] Sent: Friday, August 11, 2006 11:05 AM To: ip () v2 listbox com Subject: [IP] Twenty five years of the IBM PC Begin forwarded message: From: Claudio Gutierrez <claudio.gutierrez.m () gmail com> Date: August 11, 2006 10:04:20 AM EDT To: dave () farber net Subject: Twenty five years of the IBM PC Computer firm IBM made technological history on 12 August 1981 with the announcement of a personal computer - the IBM 5150. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4780963.stm Costing $1,565, the 5150 had just 16K of memory - scarcely more than a couple of modest e-mails worth. The machine was not the first attempt to popularise computing but it soon came to define the global standard. It altered the way business was done forever and sparked a revolution in home computing. "It's hard to imagine what people used to do with computers in those days because by modern standards they really couldn't do anything," said Tom Standage, the Economist magazine's business editor told the World Service's Analysis programme. "But there were still things you could do with a computer that you couldn't do without it like spreadsheets and word processing." <snip> ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as jdelong () pff org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as mary.shaw () gmail com To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ipArchives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting- people/
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