2. Around 1975, with the first personal computer being called the Altair, or PE-8, short for Popular Electronics 8-bit. The primitive, yet somewhat reasonable computer, $498.00 fully assembled, came with a whopping 256 bytes, not kilo-bytes.
4. The Commodore PET was liked by most due to its all in one design. I remember having this in my house when I was a kid!
5. In 1983, the IBM computer was named Time magazine machine of the year. The IBM computer was mostly developed for large scale for corporations, until 1981 when it developed the first personal computer, or PC. The first PC had 64KB of memory with an available 256KB and sold for $1,565.00. Quite a bit of money in the early ‘80’s.
6. Operating systems were introduced in 1978 to coordinate with the specific processer chip that controlled the computer. MS-DOS, created by Bill Gates, was introduced in 1980 and quickly began running every computer’s OS that had the Intel chip. This started Microsoft’s reign as one of the most dominant players in the computer industry.
7. Today’s Computers Computer’s of today feature an integrated hard drive with very powerful operating systems that produce very fast operations. This Apple pictured above uses only the monitor that has the motherboard and hard drive built in making it very easy to use and saving space.
8. Hand Held Computers The IPOD is a very popular hand held device that is used by all sorts of age groups. It can hold a bunch of information such as music, videos, pictures, games, and applications. They come with the capability of having a 64gig hard drive. Compare that to the large computers of the 80’s and 90’s.
9. A computer is just about in every household these days. Somewhat similar to having a home phone was 15 years ago. Now having a home phone is almost non-existant. So where will we be in another 15 years? Who knows what the future of the computer holds. Smaller and faster is the way it is going. I guess we will see.