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Ben Goodger wrote: > On 14/07/06, Simon Waters <simon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> >> James Fidell wrote: >> > >> > If it's really that good, why did people start moving away from >> > mainframes? > > > I think that this mainly happened (business) because secretaries of small > firms were suddenly able to afford a BBC Micro for what, £300 plus monitor? > Suddenly you didn't need to be a government, or a wal-mart branch, to > afford > a computer for your business. And of course, these one or two computers > grew > into a lot of computers by the mid-90s, and by that time they had > Windows on > them. > If I remember correctly businesses were using personal computers (PCs) in the early 80s. 8bit machines like the Commodore Pet and TRS80 and of course Apple II were much in evidence (watch the Hollywood films/TV from that period). Most machines ran CP/M as the OS and all sorts of business applications were available (some very tacky indeed). The killer app was VisCalc on the Apple II and it was this app and it's derivatives that enabled the business world to accept the PC. When IBM introduced their 16bit machine the business use of personal computers really took off. Due no doubt to the need to address greater memory space and to the perceived notion that if a respected company like IBM had adopted the PC idea then it must be OK. M$ was just a small bit-player at the time and provided the IBM with a 16bit OS (which appeared to me to be a ramped up version of CP/M). Apple introduced the GUI (after Xerox) and others like Atari and Commodore soon followed. Not wishing to M$ bash but M$ was probably the last to adopt a GUI. It's interesting to note that most of the above took place in the 80s not the 90s as most people seem to think. Keith -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html