PC World's 50 Best Tech Products of All Time

Ant writes "PC World picks the 50 best tech products of all time. Apple holds down seven places in the list, Microsoft two, and open source software (Red Hat Linux) one. The top five, according to PC World, are: Netscape Navigator (1994), Apple II (1977), TiVo HDR110 (1999), Napster (1999), and Lotus 1-2-3 for DOS (1983).

Re:Commodore C64

[ErroneousBee]

I would pick the Sinclair spectrum over the C64, they were ubiquitous in the UK. The BBC micro might also get a mention.

They also seem to have picked the cameras almost at random, those models would never have been on my short list when buying a camera. I'd look to the Cannon digital SLRs or the Nikon coolpix range for models that changed the market.

They missed the Space Invaders machine, and the digital watch.

Business hardware has been left out, wheres the Xerox machine, fax machine, mainframe, or printer?

I do think they have a pretty good list, though. Particularly the older stuff.

Re:The list

[sa1lnr]

29. HP LaserJet 4L (1993)

I bought one of these back then, lasted till June 2006. I bought another one for £9.99 (with HP toner) on eBay.

Older HP laser printers are excellent pieces of kit.

Nothing too contentious in there

[91degrees]

Surprised about the lack of Visicalc. Perhaps the Apple ][ Visicalc combo would have been a better #2. Nobody ever wanted the Apple 2. They wanted the software. People would go into computer stores and ask for "A visicalc".

Re:Voodoo 3 sucked.

[pslam]

Indeed, that surprised me too. Voodoo 1 was THE watershed graphics card - it blew away everything the competition had by an order of magnitude in high performance, features AND low price. It was even fairly unique in sitting on a separate card slot with the entire VGA signal looped through it and switched on demand. Instant upgrade for your PC. Genius marketing they had back then.

Sadly, they started drinking their own cool-aid too much. Voodoo 3 was THE bankrupting card. It was too expensive, too poor on features (16 bit rendering when everyone else was 32 bit), too poor on RAMDAC speed (poor output quality) and way too late to market. To make matters worse, their marketing department was making laughable attempts at convincing customers that they didn't really need all those extra features (what people want is render SPEED not QUALITY! Oh you already have 60fps? Hmm). You could buy an nVidia TNT2 for the same price, and it had the same performance, better quality output and better quality rendering. Even the drivers were better. I think Voodoo3 vs TNT2 marks the point where 3dfx LOST the fight. Strange that the list says it marks the pinnacle.

Sadder still, rather than recovering, they brought out the Voodoo 4/5 which added very little apart from a huge power supply burden, massive cards, and even higher costs, right when upstarts like nVidia and ATI were bringing out damn cheap, fast and single chip cards that did better.

As an aside - the CEO who bankrupted them by running the company on pure hopes and wishes alone (Greg Ballard) did the same to the company I worked for (SonicBlue/S3/Diamond). I suspect they brought him in due to his history of running a market leading company into the ground in less than a year. Job done.

RealSound? Covox?

[Animaether]

That's not entirely true... keep in mind that Access Software (Links golf, Countdown, and various other both visually and sound-wise impressive titles) offered an option called RealSound for sound playback. This sound would go through the PC Speaker (in the era of 386 and 486, this was an actual cone speaker) and produce reasonable sound output.

In addition, long before the SoundBlaster, there was the Covox - a parallel port piece of electronics you could build at home with the right components and a soldering iron - which produced superior sound. Eventually a stereo version was able to be made and addressed as well.

Now, I'll agree that the soundblaster line of products actually kicked off the real audio revolution as finally you got great quality -without- the parallel port fidgeting.. just plunk in the card and pray you get the address, irq and whatnot settings set up right; but once they were, off you were.

No search engines?

[meringuoid]

I see browsers and ISPs, but no search. Where in the name of all buggeration is Google?

The basis of their ranking

[unity100]

is that they are publishing/designer people, and all their choices reflect that.

one major example they chose amiga over commodore 64. commodore was a precedent for all to follow. many programmers who are regularing slashdot have cut their teeth on that. we have seen the rise of the cracker scene and groups on that. many people, trend and groups who have set today's IT made their advent on c64.

but those people chose amiga. why ? because they are graphics/designer/publishing people. and all the choices reflect that - almost a third of what they chose as software and hardware are publishing/designing items.

a very biased, and failed article that is.

My List

[rlp]

My list would include:

1) Personal Computer
2) Word Processing
3) Ethernet LAN
4) Mouse
5) Graphical User Interface
6) Laser Printer

In other words, products from Xerox PARC.

Re:The list

[khakipuce]

May be I don't know what a "tech" product is but this list seems utterly trival. I assume "tech" is short for technology and a good definition of that (apart from "things that don't work yet") is "The application of science, especially to industrial or commercial objectives" Is this really the "ALL TIME" list? - about the microchip, the Wright Flyer, the transistor, antibiotics, water chlorination, the X-ray machine, paper, the printing press, steel, the steam engine ... Some people's "ALL TIME" seems a bit limtied...

The list in misnamed

[brokeninside]

It should have been titled, the fifty most commercially influential consumer grade ITproducts of the last thirty years. Electrical power plants, water treatment plants and the internal combustion engine (just to name three technical innovations) have far more impact on every day life than any of the products on that list. Or even relational databases and computer warehousing. Here's another example, the credit revolution that began in the eighties was entirely dependent on large mainframes being able to interconnect with various data sources to compile a credit score that has changed the way people work, shop and live far more than the number one product on that list, Netscape Navigator.

Re:Huh?

[clickclickdrone]

Compuserve was pretty special back in the day. I used to use it in the UK and it was worth the humungous call fees back then because of what it provided in terms of forums, files, chat rooms etc. There really was nothing else like it and in these days it's all too easy to forget that. Everything else was basic BBS's.

Re:Commodore C64

[Anonymous Coward]

Both the apple // and the c64 used variants of the 6502 [wikipedia.org] processor clocked at ~1MHz. Commodore used a custom design, the 6510 [wikipedia.org]that added an I/O port.

The "toy" label I'm sure comes from the fact that the c64 had a 40 column display, vs. the 80 available (via add-on card) for the apple //. Also, the graphic and sound capabilities of the c64 were among the best of the era (in personal computers), which made it an ideal platform for writing games.

I would have rather they just chose "the 8bit personal computer" instead of trying to single one out over the others. The c64 and //e were by far the most successful, but the others out at the time (TRS-80 coco variants, the Atari 800, TI99/4a and in the UK the spectrum, etc.) held enough marketshare to be significant as well.

Not only that...

[DG]

...but the C=64 outsold the Apple IIe by an enormous margin. They were *everywhere* - the first computer sold through mass-market distribution outlets like Sears and Target. You could literally go to the local department store and buy one off the shelf; no need for specialist stores.

And they were *cheap* (by which I mean "affordable") You didn't need to sacrifice an arm and a leg to get your paws on one.

The C=64 singlehandedly introduced an entire generation to the concept of the "personal computer" as something that everybody could own and use. Without the C=64 leading the way, the PC would have wound up as an expensive bit of office furniture, like an electric typewriter or a photocopier, instead of something found in every home and school.

Sadly, Apple has done a great job rewriting history to cast their middling success with the Apple II in the part actually played by the C= 8-bit machine - strange irony from the company that produced the "1984" ad.

DG

Once again where's the HD?

[HockeyPuck]

Why is it that whenever someone comes out with a top X computing products of all time, they always leave out the hard drive? Yet somehow these boneheads listed the zipdisk, which a) didn't kill off the floppy drive (USB thumb drives did) and b) only lasted few years.

How about giving props to IBM, Seagate etc where it's due. Not only did they give you fast, reliable, RANDOM access (remember we used reel to reel tape before this) but its been increasing in capacity and speed ever since, not to mention going DOWN in price. 100GB laptop drives anyone? It wasn't that long ago when 'high performance' disk drives were in the 9 and 18GB range for disk arrays. Not for laptops.

Remember without it, you'd be trying to boot your PC with punchcards, floppy disks or tape.

-Storage Admin since 1982.

Re:Not only that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, everyone I knew had Apples and they all ended up in the tech biz. I never saw a C64 in anyone's home or school growing up. Maybe the C64 people just played games on them and it was the Apple people who tried programming.