The USB port. Besides the keyboard and mouse, no other piece of hardware has lived up to the expectations set out for it as well as USB. Almost any external imput device connects this way. It truly is a UNIVERSAL connector.
I'd say transistors... but if we're talking about bigger things, i'd say the mouse. what sets it apart from the obviously important things like cpus, disks and such is that it (and gui, but that's software) was what I believe enabled computing to penetrate the consumer market.
How many lay people do you know can operate a computer using only the keyboard?
[citation][nom]GreatWalrus[/nom]Motherboard - what can you do without one?[/citation]
Have the circuits not printed on pbc but just floating all around.
[citation][nom]echdskech[/nom]How many lay people do you know can operate a computer using only the keyboard?[/citation]
On just the OS I can do pretty much the same with a KB than with a mouse. Things start getting challenging when you try to use apps as many don't have shortcuts for all the functions.
[citation][nom]superhighperf[/nom]the CD burner changed the world[/citation]
If you say that, then you obviously don't know about the floppy swapping BBSes of the 80's. Software piracy was big even before the internet.
i wud say the most influential PERIPHERAL would have to be the keyboard, simply because you can survive without a mouse, but not a keyboard.
the most influential hardware would have to be the either the cpu or power supply. a cpu can either make or break the performance of a computer[pent d to c2d], and a terrible power supply won't let you do anything at all