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Fast-forward to the year 1964. IBM placed its money on the line, fortune 500 called it a $5 million Gamble, but it paid off big time. With the introduction of IBM's system 360 the computer industry as we know it was shaped in the blink of an eye. Hundreds of thousands of units sold
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because of one reason, compatibility. Every singe 360 part could be substituted for a part from the same system. IBM offered several combinations of power, storage and expandability, a lot like the computer manufacturers do today. In 1981 IBM again lit the computer world afire when it began to build computer built entirely form other companies components and sold them though outside
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distributors. Using Intel's 8088 processor, and a 25 person company's software MS-DOS IBM instantly launched the market of IBM clones and IBM compatibles. Now IBM compatible computers dominate the market. Starting at $1565 the IBM PC ears our award for the most significant technologically innovative paperweight, The IBM PC would not even be able to run half of today's oldest popular operating system, Windows 3.1.
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Welcome to the 1990's at the end of an era computer technology has reached new heights. Thousands of competing manufacturers of computers exist, but in comparison only a sparse amount of suppliers to handle the hardware. The technological market has exploded creating with it choice for consumers. Now At the beginning of a new era we take the next step. For several years now the most limiting factor of a
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computer was its processor. Hardware developers were anxious to create a fast enough processor to handle the most demanding programs. Today the situation has reversed, software developers are striving to take advantage of all of the resources that our computers have to offer. In 1981 a $2000 computer had a 4 MHz processor, 16 Kb (kilo-bytes) of RAM and one 160k floppy disk drive, optional equipment included a printer and color monitor at extra cost. Today the same amount buys 1 GHz (1000 MHz), a 20 Gig Hard Drive, 256 Mb(mega-bytes) of RAM, a 16x DVD-ROM, a 12x10x32 CD-RW, and surround sound audio, as well as millions of different peripherals at extra cost. The pace of technology has sure been swift and it continues to grow, exponentially. It took 20 years to create a 1000 MHz processor, it is forecasted to take 1 more to arrive at 2000 MHz. A computer scientist form the early 1980's accelerated to today would have a seizure and die of a heart
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attack after seeing the realism provided by today's second-rate machines.
Computers have pervaded every facet of our daily lives. In 1998 an industry watchdog blew the whistle on a potentially life threatening problem. Until the early 90's dates on a computer had been stored a 2 digit integer. The problem: on the eve of the 1999 new year when the computers ticked over to 2000 would they recognise it as 2000 or as 1900? The Y2K, or Year 2 Thousand "bug" was an oversight upon the parts of overzealous programmers looking for a way to make computers cheaper, memory was expensive - two digits took up less than
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four - so two digits became the standard. Another problem surfaced soon after threatening even older machines in use by the American and Russian military when their machines basest system would max out because of a limitation. Another such event is predicted to happen to all IBM clones early in 2001. All of these have arisen because early programmers didn't believe that computers would be around long enough to affect our lives, they thought it was a fad. Well this fad has stayed the course of time, and if past experiences are any indication we will advance through any difficulties.
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