The 50 Best Tech Products of All Time
From breakthrough hardware to time-honored software, we salute those amazing products that changed technology--and our lives--forever.
Christopher Null, PC World
The 50 Best Tech Products, by Decade
Duran Duran, REM, Nirvana. The eighties and nineties were fantastic eras for music, and they also gave us some of the greatest technology of our time. Here are our 50 best tech products, listed by decade.
We'd like to know what you think, so vote for your own favorite best product. And see our Slide Show: The Products PCW Should Have Picked.
1970 to 1979
1980 to 1989
- Epson MX-80 (1980)
- Hayes Smartmodem (1981)
- CompuServe (1982)
- PC-Talk (1982)
- Lotus 1-2-3 for DOS (1983)
- Brøderbund The Print Shop (1984)
- ChipSoft TurboTax (1985)
- Aldus PageMaker (1985)
- Central Point Software PC Tools (1985)
- Commodore Amiga 1000 (1985)
- Microsoft Excel (1985)
- Nintendo Entertainment System (1985)
- Tetris (1985)
- Apple Macintosh Plus (1986)
- Compaq Deskpro 386 (1986)
- Apple HyperCard (1987)
- Northgate OmniKey Ultra (1987)
- Eudora (1988)
- Nintendo Game Boy (1989)
- WordPerfect 5.1 (1989)
1990 to 1999
- McAfee VirusScan (1990)
- Creative Labs Sound Blaster 16 (1992)
- IBM ThinkPad 700C (1992)
- HP LaserJet 4L (1993)
- id Software Doom (1993)
- Adobe Photoshop 3.0 (1994)
- Iomega Zip Drive (1994)
- Netscape Navigator (1994)
- Red Hat Linux (1994)
- Microsoft Windows 95 (1995)
- Sony Handycam DCR-VX1000 (1995)
- Adaptec Easy CD Creator (1996)
- Mirabilis ICQ (1996)
- Motorola StarTAC (1996)
- Palm Pilot 1000 (1996)
- Sony Mavica MVC-FD5 (1997)
- 3dfx Voodoo3 (1999)
- Apple Airport Base Station (1999)
- Napster (1999)
- TiVo HDR110 (1999)
"The 50 Best Tech Products of All Time" Comments