Look How Far We've Come...CORRECTED

   That archaic looking machine is one of the first personal computers ever put on sale. 32 years ago today, IBM introduced the 5150. It had 16k RAM, no disc drives (they were an option) and a color graphics adapter. It cost just over 15 hundred dollars, more than twice what you'll pay for a laptop or pad in most places, when introduced August 12, 1981. It did come with some programs: A spread sheet program and a cave exploration game.
   By today's standards, it was a moron. Tablets, pads and smart phones have more computing power than the 5150. But it also launched the PC revolution, and within 18 months IBM was selling one every minute of every business day, with between 50 and 70% of them going into homes. The 5150 was in production until 1987.
   Our first "desktop" was an IBM 486, bought in 1991 for about 17 hundred bucks. If I remember right, it had 2 MB of RAM and a 130 MB hard-drive along with the 486 processor. Again, slow and moronic by today's standards, but powerful back in the day. It ran on the DOS system (again archaic), and the best part was we could play games on it!
   Family favourites included Wolfenstein 3-D, Darklands and even DOOM.
   Happy 32nd birthday PC progenitor!

TTFN
*****Sorry, I went a little too far in the future with the stats for our first system. I've corrected them to say megabytes instead of gigabytes.*****