PC Power

0 Comments | Insight on the News, July 5, 1999 | by Stephen Goode

Goodness, how quickly some things get better and better: On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the personal computer, perhaps better known as the PC, Dell Computer Corp. released some high-tech trivia that impressed Associated Press business writer Joyce M. Rosenberg, who writes AP's column called "Watercooler."

The first PC was the Altair computer, says Dell, and it sold for $400 (which was a great deal more a quarter-century ago than $400 is today). It operated at 2 MHz and contained 256 bytes of RAM. Today's top personal computer, by contrast, runs at 500 MHz and has 3 million times as much RAM.

Dell adds that if you go back more than 50 years, to 1946, there is a machine called the ENIAC (Electronic Numeral Integrator and Computer), which Dell calls the first electronic computer. The ENIAC weighed more than 30 tons and filled a room the size of a tennis court. The cutting-edge PC of today, as most everyone knows, sits on top of a desk and performs 20,000 times as fast as the ENIAC.