Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!hplabs!hpda!hptsug2!taylor
From: mike@cisunx.UUCP (Mike Elliot)
Newsgroups: comp.society
Subject: Re: "Personal" Computers
Message-ID: <463@hptsug2.HP.COM>
Date: 26 Aug 88 22:58:29 GMT
Sender: taylor@hptsug2.HP.COM
Organization: Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic
Lines: 22
Approved: taylor@hplabs

I missed  the original article on this, so I apologize if I am just
restating what someone else already said.

As far as I am concerned, a `personal computer' is a computer whose resources
are too limited to run a multi-user operating system in a pleasant way. By
this definition, an IBM AT is a personal computer, because even though you
can run UNIX or some other multi-user operating system on it, it wouldn't
be a pleasant experience. Now the 386 machines are border-line personal
computers. They're not quite ready for multi-user environments, but they're
damn close.

			Mike Elliot
			{allegra|bellcore|cadre|psuvax1}!pitt!cisunx!mike
			mike@pittvms.bitnet

It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more
doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage, than the creation of a
new system.  For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by
the preservation of the old institutions and merely lukewarm defenders in
those who would gain by the new ones.

			-Machiavelli