http://www.physorg.com/news74500308.html

The first true personal computers were "slow" and "clunky" only by comparison with later machines. When they were first introduced (I had a TRS-80 Model 1 in 1979) they were amazing and a lot of fun. It"s easy to imagine a news article 25 years from now calling Dual Core computers slow and clunky, too.

What is the point of this random article?

It's 25 years since the PC came out. People have forgotten what a momentous event that was. The fledgling PC industry existed - but it was fractured. Yes - most machines ran on a Z-80 processor, and some version of CP/M. But, none of them could share each others software. They all differed from each other in as basic a way as the format of their floppy disks. There was no player in the market big enough to present a standard that would stick.

When the IBM PC hit the streets, it wasn't the fastest computer available - and certainly not the cheapest . And a case could be made that PC-DOS was a lot like a stripped down (and inferior) CP/M. And there wasn't any software available for it to speak of. Users groups got together to format their floppies and run chkdsk and the like for the first few months. But people bought it because it reeked of standardization and legitimacy and the future - and that's what the industry, at the time, desperately needed. IBM coming into the personal computer market made personal computing a reality in a way that all the little techno-hippie-in-a-garage companies combined - plus Radio Shack - couldn't.

So - hurray for the PC - the silly little box whose existence, rather than it's excellence, changed the world!