Industry Celebrates the 1 Billionth PC
WinInfo | at | by Mike
Industry analyst firm Gartner Dataquest announced this week that the PC industry has shipped over 1 billion personal computers in the roughly 25 years since the first PC, the Altair, debuted in 1974. Like most PCs built since then, the Altair was powered by an Intel microprocessor--an 8-bit 8080--though the power and flexibility of processors and PCs have expanded dramatically over the years. A basic Altair with 256 bytes of RAM (yes, bytes) cost about $400 in 1974, but the customer had to assemble the device, an often perilous and unsuccessful venture. And input occurred via binary switches on the device's front panel, with output through binary LEDs. Ah, the good old days.