PC celebrates 30 years
By siliconindia   |   Wednesday, 17 August 2011, 23:42 IST
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Bangalore: The personal computers (PC) are among the innovations to make a dramatic impact on the world and the PC now ranks up with wheels and steam engines. It was 30 years ago, on August 12, 1981; IBM's 5150 made its debut and set off the digital revolution which was a novel device to come out of IBM. Big Blues, famous for Mainframes, room-sized computers, targeted the desktop market with little 5150s.
Being the first company in business; some other companies like Apple already existed in the business in that segment. The first PC had only 16 KB RAM and no floppy disc units. The IBM PC was retailed at the cheapest price of $1,565, which was expensive according to 1981 prices, which resulted for commercial failure of the machine.
Until IBM engineers went ahead and unveiled the revolution, the PC were vertically integrated and the manufacturers also made hardware and software components of its own. But the engineer from IBM took a different route, instead of limiting to IBM's propriety technologies, they shopped for the components. Thus triggering new waves of innovations and competition, it drove the prices and increased the popularity of PCs.

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