First PC vs. Travel Man's BlackBerry

It's amazing how far computers have come in 27 years. Let's see how my 8703 BlackBerry (a two year old design) measures up:

1981: IBM introduces the 5150 personal computer. It will sweep away the competition and effectively have the field to itself, for a while.
Before 1980, IBM made only mini and mainframe computers. The old-line firm just wasn't sure that the fledgling microcomputer market would be at all profitable. But once the company decided to act, it developed the 5150 in less than a year at its Boca Raton, Florida, facility -- using existing off-the-shelf components. IBM selected Intel's 8-to-16-bit 8088 processor, because it thought both the Intel 8086 and Motorola MC68000 16-bit processors were too powerful.
For an operating system, IBM first went to Digital Research, which had developed CP/M. When Digital declined, IBM went to a small firm known for microcomputer adaptations of BASIC: Microsoft.
Microsoft bought the rights to Seattle Computer Products' QDOS (supposedly, "Quick and Dirty Operating System," itself a possible hack of CP/M). In Microsoft's hands, QDOS became PC-DOS and later MS-DOS. (The 5150 could also run the more-expensive CP/M-86 and UCSD D-Pascal operating systems, but the $40 price tag on PC-DOS 1.0 made it irresistible to most users.)
IBM unveiled its new baby in Boca Raton and at New York City's Waldorf Astoria hotel.

IBM 5150
It weighed 25 pounds

Standard 64 kB, expandable to 256 kB

Monochromatic display

The 16-kb base model, with no data-storage drives included, cost $1,565 ($3,770 in today's money). If you loaded a 64-kB box with all the standard features, that jumped to $2,880 ($6,930 today), and souped up with color graphics and 256 kB, it'd cost you about $6,000 ($14,400 today). Available software included the VisiCalc spreadsheet, Easywriter 1.0 and Adventure, Microsoft's first game.

BlackBerry 8703e
Weighs 4.7 ounces
64 MB
Color, backlit display
It cost @ $400 (less if coupled with a multiyear agreement). Available software includes Wireless email, Organizer, Browser, Phone, Corporate data access, SMS, MMS and GPS. And Brick Breaker if you like video games.

IBM retailed the 5150 through ComputerLand and Sears, Roebuck. It sold 65,000 PCs in four months, with 100,000 orders taken by Christmas.
The 5150 was trouncing all the other microcomputers targeted for homes and small businesses. It established the dominance of the Microsoft operating system, pushing CP/M and proprietary operating systems out of the market. On the hardware side, its boxy design became the model for PC compatibles, and the ISA bus supplanted the old S-100 bus as standard.

It would be two-and-a-half years before the first real challenge appeared, when the original Apple Macintosh went on sale. (Soccer Mom likes this part!).

Source: Old Computers Online Museum


http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/362599076/dayintech_0812