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From: doug@edge.UUCP (Doug Pardee)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: What's a PC?
Message-ID: <799@edge.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 3-Jun-87 15:43:37 EDT
Article-I.D.: edge.799
Posted: Wed Jun  3 15:43:37 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 9-Jun-87 02:04:21 EDT
References: <3650@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> <57500004@gorgo.UUCP>
Organization: Edge Computer Corporation, Scottsdale, AZ
Lines: 34
Summary: A somewhat different view

Well, I don't understand what the big deal is.  Like Humpty Dumpty might
have said, a PC is whatever you say it is.

As for the historical usage...

In the long-ago days before the IBM PC was introduced, there were these
other personally-owned microcomputers.  When it was necessary to refer to
them collectively, they were oftentimes called "micros".  The news media
in particular preferred the terms "home computer" and "personal computer".

But we who owned such things wouldn't stoop to such generic terms.  After
all, we were no less chauvinistic about our choice of computer brand than
modern-day hackers.  Thus, in my camp, they were TRS-80s.  Of course, there
were those deranged folks who insisted that microcomputers were called
Apples.  But we paid no attention to them, nor they to us.  [There were a
small number of people who owned other brands, but since they weren't
TRS-80s and they weren't Apples, those weren't really computers.]

One day a strange thing happened.  IBM introduced a micro, and didn't give
it a high-falutin' name.  They just called it a Personal Computer.  A modest
name for an obvious dud of a machine.  Jeez, the name couldn't even be
trademarked.

In the *real* micro world every advertisement in a magazine ended with a
lengthy trademark acknowledgement like, "Tandy, Radio Shack, TRS-80, and
TRSDOS are trademarks of Tandy Corp." or "Apple, Apple ][, and Applesoft
are trademarks of Apple Computer."  How was IBM ever going to compete when
just *anybody* could use the term "PC" in an ad without acknowledging whose
computer was being referred to?  What was going to stop somebody from coming
out with a magazine called "PC"?

IBM has obviously paid the price for its oversight on this matter :-)
-- 
Doug Pardee, Edge Computer Corp; ihnp4!mot!edge!doug, seismo!ism780c!edge!doug