"Misery, heartbreak, sorrow, and despair. No, I'm not talking about adolescence; I'm referring to what happens when you're stuck with a PC from Hell. Systems that were overpriced and underpowered, parts that failed two days after the warranty expired, marathon phone calls with brain-dead tech support staff - over the years we've suffered more than our share of ills, and so have millions of other innocent PC users. But picking these 10 Worst PCs of All Time wasn't as easy as it sounds."
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Member since:2005-11-10
Aye, I remember the story about the [original] Mac engineers buying an IBM PC when they came out and taking it back to Apple to have a look at it. They were mortified at what they found. Shoddy, underpowered parts thrown together in a shoddy case, with even soddier software.
They had just finished pouring their heart and soul into building a machine with a custom board designed to use as few chips as possible (unlike the IBM PC which had many needless parts due to bad design) and with a mouse, a gui, a 3.5" floppy drive and a 32-bit processor, and here was their successor, a bunch of underpowered bits thrown together in a box.
Member since:2005-07-24
Member since:2005-11-16
They were mortified at what they found. Shoddy, underpowered parts thrown together in a shoddy case, with even soddier software.
The poor design decisions IBM made, as they rushed their PC to market, should be enough on their own to earn it a place on the list. Those initial mistakes haunted the PC for years to come, and forced a series of hacks and kludges that arguably still affect the PC today.
Having said that, if IBM had taken the PC more seriously and spent more effort designing it, we might not have PC clones on 95% of desktops today.
A system with lots of elegantly designed custom hardware, and a superior OS designed by IBM, would almost certainly have been a much better computer than the IBM PC running MS-DOS. However, it wouldn't have been so easy for companies like Compaq to create compatible systems. It would still have been a success in the business world thanks to the IBM brand name, but would they have entered the home without cheap clones?
Member since:2005-07-06
I disagree with the VIC 20 being in the top 10 at all. He has not compared the VIC 20 with any of its contemparies.
In 1981 the rivals for the VIC 20 were this;
ZX81 which had b&w graphics, 1kb ram and no sound.
Acorn Atom also b&w graphics, 3kb ram and 2 channel sound.
Member since:2005-11-16
I disagree with the VIC 20 being in the top 10 at all. He has not compared the VIC 20 with any of its contemparies.
In 1981 the rivals for the VIC 20 were this;
ZX81 which had b&w graphics, 1kb ram and no sound.
Acorn Atom also b&w graphics, 3kb ram and 2 channel sound.
There were more capable computers available, the Apple II for example, but of course that was significantly more expensive.
I agree with you that the VIC 20 shouldn't be on the list. Simply being less powerful than some higher priced products didn't make it bad. Unlike the IBM PC I think it was great value compared with most of its comtemporaries.
The only thing really wrong with the VIC 20 was that the C64 followed it so quickly. It meant that VIC 20 users never enjoyed the huge selection of commercial software and peripherals available to BBC Micro, ZX Spectrum, Apple II and C64 users. Of course the hardware itself wasn't to blame for that, it was just a very fast moving time and a lot of people found that their new computers were quickly superseded.
Member since:2005-07-06
You forget the TRS-80 Color Computer, which came out in 1980 with color graphics, several kilobytes RAM (depending how much cash you were willing to offer Radio Shack), 1 channel sound (I think), and a CPU that made the competition look like morons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Color_Computer
Member since:2006-04-10
"ZX81 which had b&w graphics, 1kb ram and no sound."
The XZ81 was a brilliant little machine, it cost next to nothing and a 16k memory add-on was cheap. It even had a sparky little printer. Mine still works 25 years later!
Of course its nothing to what we have today, but I cut my programming teeth on it with Sinclair Basic and assembler until the Spectrum came along.
Sinclair/Timex raised a whole generation.
Member since:
2005-11-16
I'd rank the original IBM PC as one of the worst. The quality of the hardware was fine, and it was certainly a success, but it was incredibly overpriced and underpowered compared with the alternatives.
Because of its poor colour graphics and small amount of preinstalled RAM, they consider the Vic 20 to be the 7th worst PC of all time. Yet the graphical capabilities of the original IBM PC (320x200 resolution, 4 colours) were inferior to many cheap 8bit computers, and the 16-64Kb RAM it offered was pretty poor for a 16bit computer running MS-DOS.
The Vic 20 may have been a low-end computer, but at least it was priced accordingly. The IBM PC cost significantly more than much more capable computers from other companies.
For example, compare it with the Victor 9000 (ACT Sirius S1 in Europe). For less money you got a system with twice the memory, a much higher resolution (800x400) display, and two high density (1.2Mb) floppy drives (compared with a single 160Kb drive on the PC). For it to be a usable machine the IBM PC really had to be upgraded from it's basic spec, making it a much more expensive option.
It sometimes amazes me just how powerful the marketing and brand name of a product can be...