PC World's 25 Greatest PCs of All Time

[NMDante]

Thought this was pretty interesting, especially with all the multicores flying around:

PC World's 25 Greatest PCs of All Time

I think I tried or played with 5 of these systems.
Commodore Amiga
Apple II
Atari 800
TRS-80 Model 100
Apple Mac Plus
Oh, man, I'm showing my age....

 

[Multiplectic]

Mmmm, that doesn't show your age at all.
I mean, I had an IBM AT "clone", and I'm 21.
(When my dad bought it, it was already old, but hey, I have great memories of that PC).

About the article, I think there's too many apples in that tree. :roll:

 

[chuckshissle]

Well next year I should buy the greatest pc of all time to play Crysis. :roll: At least it would only cost me $9.99 in some antique shop and hopefully it comes with a solitaire game.

 

[1Tanker]

Thought this was pretty interesting, especially with all the multicores flying around:

PC World's 25 Greatest PCs of All Time

I think I tried or played with 5 of these systems.
Commodore Amiga
Apple II
Atari 800
TRS-80 Model 100
Apple Mac Plus
Oh, man, I'm showing my age....

Look at some of those prices.....Crazy. A wristwatch probably has more power than some of the oldest ones. :?

 

[NMDante]

Thought this was pretty interesting, especially with all the multicores flying around:

PC World's 25 Greatest PCs of All Time

I think I tried or played with 5 of these systems.
Commodore Amiga
Apple II
Atari 800
TRS-80 Model 100
Apple Mac Plus
Oh, man, I'm showing my age....

Look at some of those prices.....Crazy. A wristwatch probably has more power than some of the oldest ones. :?

Oh, I know. The prices were insane, but back then, it was pretty unusal to have a computer at home, let alone for gaming. LOL.
I remember my first 5 1/4 floppy game: ZORK. All text based, and pretty damn fun, even though I had no idea what the "Verbose" command really meant, at the time.

The first computer I owned was a Compaq Portable. Not laptop, since this bad boy weighed in at a whopping 30 lbs, or something. 4 1/2 in. green monochrome screen, dual floppy drives, attached keyboard, 8088 intel CPU at a speedy 25MHz, I think, and a gang busting 256k of on board memory. It was...well, crap. LOL. I upgraded to a swift 286 some months later.

*edit*
I was wrong. From Old Computers:
Compaq Portable
Introduced: November 1982
Released: March 1983
Price: US$3590 (two floppy system)
How many? 53,000 in 1983, the first year
Weight: 28 pounds.
CPU: Intel 8088, 4.77MHz
RAM: 128K, 640K max
Display: 9" monochrome monitor built-in
80 X 25 text
Color graphic card
Storage: Two 320K 5-1/4" disk drives
Ports: 2 parallel, 1 serial
OS: MS-DOS

LOL

 

[NMDante]

Ohhhhh my goodness, I played Zork and Zork II --- they also had a 'Hitchickers Guide to the Galaxy' text base game --- I remember it clearly typing in "Put fish in ear". Then all the jibberish turned legible.

Too funny.

Ah yes, the Babel, or something like that, fish, wasn't it called. LOL

The last Infocomm game I played was "The Leather Godess of Phobos". It didn't have a rating, but it probably would've been "M" for "My GAWD! What did I just type?

LOL

 

[shinigamiX]

Heh, funny people should mention that. Feel nostalgic? BBC's got the HGTTG game on their site
Interesting choice of computers. The Compaq Laptop especially weirded me out. Not only is it the newest, I'd never heard anything particularly good about it until this article. I was expecting one or two ultraportable notebooks... or maybe I'm too young to understand?

 

[shinigamiX]

I've been trying it on-and-off for years and still gotten nowhere... damn infocom! Now, to find 'The Lurking Horror'...

 

[mickeddie]

What amazes me is that in 1998 the Alienware Area 51 was $3800. I just went to the Alienware site to customize a system, and a high-end system costs about $3600-3700.

What is $3800 in 1998 compared to today when you adjust for inflation? I always find it interesting that the COST of technology really doesn't change that much from year-to-year.

 

[shinigamiX]

Yea, totally right. Especially when you consider early computers like the Commodore 64 or the Apple II cost at least $2000.

 

[UnWorldly]

I think the IBM PS-2 shoulda been on that list, I friggin loved that thing.

 

[exit2dos]

I think the IBM PS-2 shoulda been on that list, I friggin loved that thing.

The PS/2 series usually makes it on the Worst 25 list in most magazines. While the machines were good for their time, IBM's attempt at a proprietary PC systems with their Micro Channel Architecture Bus was not well received.

 

[TheMaster]

I agree. I have fond memories playin Descent II on my 486 and even a black and white 286 laptop, can't say the same about macs.

Our school had them, and they were the slowest pos ever. I think they were called powermacs.. the entire thing was a huge monitor with a floppy drive on the bottom.

 

[turkishdrummer]

dang... weve come a long way..

 

[1Tanker]

dang... weve come a long way..

Imagine back then....Who would have believed that most systems were being built with 1-2GB of RAM, 250GB+ drives, 3GHz+ CPU's and video cards with 500+MHz GPU's and 256+mb GRAM? People would have laughed in your face...

 

[shinigamiX]

Maybe in 5 years Atom Chip corporation wil be the one to beat.. 8O

 

[1Tanker]

Maybe in 5 years Atom Chip corporation wil be the one to beat.. 8O

Overclockers.com doesn't think we'll have PC's in another 25 years.

http://www.overclockers.com/tips01014/

Doesn't sound like any fun though. :?

 

[michaelahess]

I've got a powerbook 100 (still works), trs-80 model 100 (still use it), toshiba t1000 (not such good shape), something that looks very similar to that kpro with one of them plasma displays, amiga 1000 (yeah baby), 2x Mac Plus, 4x apple II's (various variaties), and a crap load more old machines, almost one of every old world mac (one or two of each model line), and some old TI, panasonic, and sony systems. And some other old crap I haven't bothered inventoring. I prefer my commador 64 and it's super tape drive thing, and my apple IIc and Woz edition IIgs.

Apple was always quite inovative, now they just wanna make a buck (or a trillion).

Edit: Anyone remember the Laser 128 Apple II clones? Got one of them too

Edit2: Odel Lake and the original Oregan Trail, good times.

 

[michaelahess]

I think the IBM PS-2 shoulda been on that list, I friggin loved that thing.

The PS/2 series usually makes it on the Worst 25 list in most magazines. While the machines were good for their time, IBM's attempt at a proprietary PC systems with their Micro Channel Architecture Bus was not well received.

I learned AutoCAD on the 35 series, great little machines for that, made all kinds of cool crap with the wax CAM machines we had. All running on a 16mb Token Ring network I ripped out and replaced with 100mb ethernet my junior year.