[IP] more on Twenty five years of the IBM PC

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

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>


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