Pointing out that no single device had taken over, instead we were seeing a number of devices based on the “socially-mediated innovation” that has been developed in the last few years.  The IBM 5150 was launched on August 12th 1981.  In his post, Dean said ”When I helped design the PC, I didn’t think I’d live long enough to witness its decline.”  He noted with some sadness that his own primary computer was now a tablet.

It’s amazing to me to think that August 12 marks the 30th anniversary of the IBM Personal Computer. The announcement helped launch a phenomenon that changed the way we work, play and communicate.  Little did we expect to create an industry that ultimately peaked at more than 300 million unit sales per year. I’m proud that I was one of a dozen IBM engineers who designed the first machine and was fortunate to have lead subsequent IBM PC designs through the 1980s.

He went on to comment that ”It’s becoming clear that innovation flourishes best not on devices but in the social spaces between them, where people and ideas meet and interact, it is there that computing can have the most powerful impact on economy, society and people’s lives.”

IBM itself moved away from the desktop PC market some years ago after losing out to companies such as HP and Dell.  It eventually sold it’s laptop business to the Chinese and now concentrates on the server market.  The company still maintains revenues higher than Microsoft for the server hardware that it sells.

It is amazing when you think about it, that PCs are still with us.  The colours might have changed, but the traditional box and keyboard haven’t changed much at all in the last 30 years.  I personally remember using one of the original IBM PCs extensively in my youth, though I preferred the Apple II for it’s compactness (it weighed nearly 30 by 45 by 12 cm and weighed 11.5 lbs).  Eventually my father bought me a second hand Olivetti XT machine from his work with a copy of WordPerfect 5.1 and this was my first proper PC.

Around 400 million PCs are sold each year and it may be that Dean’s prediction is premature.  Business is still the largest users of PCs worldwide and businesses have a long-earned reputation for moving very slowly with new technologies.  Given the additional software development costs they face it’s very likely that the traditional desktop PC will still be a feature of offices around the globe for two decades to come.

That said, consumers are now moving towards tablets and other devices including smartphones and netbooks as their main computer.  Only serious content creators and hard core gamers still evangelise about the PC in the way we used to last decade.

So who knows at this point what the future holds for the humble desktop PC.  Certainly we will see them commonly morph into all-in-one machines but battery technology still isn’t good enough to convince the masses to switch to portable and mobile devices.  While tablets such as the iPad can boast impressive battery lives of up to 16 hours on a single charge, most devices will still run out of power after four.

So, happy 30th birthday to the IBM 5150, you started a revolution that has impacted positively on mankind, generated incalculable numbers of jobs in all manner of industries, and that has even created hundreds of new industries in the process.

It might be worth noting though, all things considered, that I’m writing this article on a Google Chromebook.

I met a lot of friendly, nice people on my way. I don’t have the time nor memory to mention all of them but I would like to take the time and thank several people in particular who have helped or supported me in one way or the other. In no particular order, here they come:

Individuals:

You I would like to thank you, each and everyone of you who support me by visiting my blog, commenting on articles, sending in tips, reporting errors or any other way of aiding my journey into problogger heaven. I would not be here without your support.

Everton from Connected Internet My blogging partner. We share the knowledge we gather. Be it new advertising schemes, plugins, tricks, tips and everything else. I would not be where I’m without him.

Tobey He is sending in lots of interesting stories that I publish at ghacks under my name. His interests are a little different from mine and I’m happy that he supports me especially when I’m on holiday ;)

Thunder7 Sends me interesting links from time to time which is a real help as well.

Alain Mevellec a nice and helpful guy who helped me create the old ghacks logos.

Syber Wo is running the Chinese version of Ghacks. He is doing a tremendous job translating almost any article into Chinese. A real workaholic.

Jonathan is translating my articles into Spanish on the Spanish version of my blog.

Eddie Corbano A friend who recently began blogging with whom I discuss everything related to blogging.

Sammy and Stefan Colleagues from work. We discuss a lot of blogging related matters there.

Companies:

Google I would not be where I’m without Google. They send the majority of traffic to my site and pay me the most money from advertisement.

Text-Link-Ads< A friendly helpful company that I love to deal with.

Tribalfusion A cpm company that I’m a member of.

Intellitxt The links with double underlines ? They are my second biggest earner and I’m looking forward to implement their code on my other websites.

My readers love firefox, 54.7% of you are using Firefox with another 2,6 using Mozilla or beta versions of the upcoming Firefox 2.0 browser. The Internet Explorer makes it to 34.1% and Opera to 4.2%. The large number for Internet Explorer comes mostly from search engines, if you are a visiting my site regularly you most likely are using Firefox.

85.5% are using a Windows operating system, 8% Linux and 4.7% Mac Os. Most are using Windows and I do not see that this will be changing in the near future. I plan to buy a new pc at the end of this year and this one will solely run on either free bsd or a linux distribution. I will create a blog about it, my steps into the Linux world and write about all the problems and solutions I have faced.

Most of you stay between 0 and 30 seconds, reading one article I presume but about 5% of all visitors stay more than 30 minutes on my website. Not sure if they are simply forgetting to close it or are really using my website though ;).
I would like to remind everyone that the Ghacks First Anniversary Competition is still running. To sum it up: Write an article, I publish it, the best three articles recieve a paypal payment of 50$, 30$ and 20$. This competition ends the day before the anniversary which is 2. October 2006.

Write an article for ghacks.net

Write an article that has a minimum of 200 words and submit it to my email address (will be listed at the end of the article). The article that you submitted will be posted on ghacks.net if it meets the guidelines (no spam, illegal, gambling, sex and the like). I will contact you asap if the article was rejected and will state the cause.

If the article gets approved it will be immediately published, full credits will be given to the author at the end of the article. This is a great way to promote a website as well. I post your name and a link to your website if you have one on my site.

I will select the three best articles who will receive each 50$, 30$ and 20$. The money will be transferred using paypal because this is the system I´am using. I can also send it to you by snail mail, highly insecure but nevertheless a solution if you are not using paypal.

The competition ends 02.10.2006, one day before the first anniversary. Winners will be named on the day of the anniversary. Everyone else will be thanked for their contributions as well. That is, if I receive more than three, hehe.

email to send contributions to: ghacks (at) mysega (.) de

If you have further questions or need advice on an article feel free to contact me at the same email address.

Let the Games Begin.