Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!purdue!decwrl!hplabs!hpda!hptsug2!taylor
From: DATJN@NEUVM1.BITNET (Jakob Nielsen)
Newsgroups: comp.society
Subject: Re: "Personal" Computers
Message-ID: <474@hptsug2.HP.COM>
Date: 29 Aug 88 23:46:52 GMT
Sender: taylor@hptsug2.HP.COM
Organization: Tech University of Denmark
Lines: 20
Approved: taylor@hplabs

I would agree with the definition that a personal computer is one that
is dedicated to a single user.  If an IBM PS/2 is used with Unix to
support 5 terminals, then it is not a personal computer even though the
same hardware can certainly be used as such.

The most important point, however, from my perspective as a user
interface specialist, is that a personal computer dedicates all its
computing resources to support the user interface:  It can give a much
broader bandwidth in the human-computer communication than a
non-personal computer.

Let's take the good old traffic analogi:  A bus is like a mainframe:
public transportation/computing - the advantage is that other people
take care of maintaining it etc.  Your own car is like a personal
computer.  You can get the same servise (actually better) from a taxi,
which could perhaps correspond to "de luxe" time shared interfaces, but
it is still not as responsive to your needs when you need transportation
Christmas Eve etc.

Jakob Nielsen