Those companies were able to clone the IBM PC because IBM made the mistake of allowing its partner, Microsoft, to license a virtually identical version of its PC-DOS operating system to any takers.
This opened the door for Honeywell, which started to make mainframes that were wholly compatible with IBM's products but cost less, and eventually, for the appearance of IBM PC clones.
Growing up in suburban Boston he began tinkering at age 5 with an IBM PC Junior.
Our results show that Lenovo's acquisition of the IBM PC business has become a success.
For much of my professional career (IBM PC, Dell, Power Computing) I competed against Apple.
When Lenovo bought the IBM PC division, the Chinese company sold pretty much just PCs in China.
The personal computers of 1981, including the Apple II and the IBM PC, were punks by today's standards.
Since the merger of Lenovo and IBM PC, the company has striven to blend the two into a single culture.
Examples of assembly language software you may be familiar with are IBM PC DOS and the spreadsheet program Lotus 1-2-3.
The Blackberry is analogous to the IBM PC, introduced in 1981.
In the past, Lenovo has purchased systems companies IBM PC Division in 2005, German computer maker Medion in 2011 but never a pure-play software firm.
In early August, Dr Mark Dean, one of the designers of the original IBM PC, declared that the centre of the computing world had shifted away from the humble desktop.
After the launch of the IBM PC in 1981, UNESCO became a pioneer for supporting the development of advanced well documented software working in different languages and distributed free-of-charge (freeware) to its Member States.
He asked his crew of engineers and physicists if they could build something that read data straight off the screen, like a camera, and then translated that information into electronic bits and sent it to the waiting IBM PC.
When Andrew Fluegelman first got hold of an early IBM PC, he noticed that there was no way to exchange files with other PC users or log on to early services like CompuServe or The Source or computer bulletin boards.
FORBES: Award Ceremony to Honor Students and Remember PC and Mac Pioneer Andrew Fluegelman
Peterffy had taken the incoming data wire meant for the terminal and spliced it, soldering the split end into a circuit board that his team of programmers and physicists had built from scratch and embedded into the motherboard of an IBM PC.
The personal computers of 1981, including the Apple (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) II and the IBM (nyse: IBM - news - people ) PC, were punks by today's standards.
But the successful purchase of IBM's PC computer arm by Chinese computer company Lenovo shows another model.
In addition to the global economic downturn, the botched integration of IBM's PC business has been weighing on Lenovo's results.
It should be noted that IBM exited the PC business years ago when it sold off its product line to Lenovo.
Since 1986, the PC division at IBM has been unable to locate the sweet spot of consistent profits, though its computers remain among the best.
His evidence showed how Microsoft effectively controlled IBM's PC hardware and software businesses by making the price of Windows considerably higher than for other comparable PC makers.
While Sony has wisely adopted a standard x86 PC architecture for the its new game console (translation: developer friendly), the PS3 was driven by incompatible Power PC architecture from IBM.
FORBES: Definition Of Insanity: PSN Purchases, Game Saves Won't Transfer To PlayStation 4
Let others like IBM quit the PC business.
FORBES: By Keeping PCs, Is HP Betting that Tablets are Disruptive - or Not?
The company, which bought the PC assets of IBM in 2005, had a devil of a time trying to integrate the two companies, but integration issues are now for the most part in the past.
There has been increasing buzz on the Street lately about the possibility that HP might spin off its PC business to focus on its enterprise software and services business, in the same way that IBM once sold off its own PC and notebooks units.
The IBM site limits which PC models are available and refers visitors to their nearest dealer for the rest.
It has far fewer administrators the sort of middle managers who bloated the IBM payroll before the PC revolution and its hospitals are designed for efficient movement of people and materials.
In 1983 Saban found his way to Los Angeles and came up with a licensing scheme as clever as the one that Bill Gates cut with IBM for the original PC.
应用推荐