The PC at 20

Q: How do you crash Microsoft Windows?

A: Start Microsoft Windows.

The joke has been around for years. There are plenty of reasons why Windows PCs are so unstable. And one of the biggest is history--20 years of it, now. Today's Wintel (shorthand for Windows on an Intel processor) systems descend directly from the original IBM PC. Announced in August 1981, it was a product that IBM rushed to market with no inkling that it was setting a worldwide standard that would prevail for decades to come.

Of course, all that history has its good side. IBM's machine was extremely versatile, infinitely upgradable, and well documented--strengths that led to the PC's initial success and enduring ubiquity. But those same virtues led to a haphazard evolution that piled one problem on top of another.

With their beautiful graphics, multitasking applications, and networking talents, today's gigahertz-plus systems seem a far cry from the PCs of two decades ago. Still, at the heart of every 21st century Windows-based computer lies an IBM PC.

"What's amazing," says Dan Bricklin, whose Visicalc was the first PC spreadsheet, "is that you can take software for the original PC and run it on today's Windows [systems]."

Since 1981, PC technology has seen remarkable advances--and more than a few false starts and outright blunders. So let's look back and see how today's systems got the way they are. Return with us now to the dawn of PC history . . . .

Lincoln Spector is a contributing editor for PC World.