Project 1

How did IBM sell their first PC’s? Why did it Click?

Before reading about IBM’s first PC’s, I had a few guesses on why it could have “clicked” during that time. I said, maybe because they used to create calculators and typewriters before, maybe they have gotten the trust of the people, or maybe their computers are cheaper.

During that time, there were other companies who developed their own PC’s. My first guess may be a factor, but not exactly the reason why they were able to sell. My second guess was proven false after reading some articles about the IBM 5100.

( figures from http://oldcomputers.net/ibm5100.html )

If you want to buy an IBM 5100, you should at least have $8,975. I think that that’s too much for a small object that looks like a typewriter. The 5150 was a lot cheaper, it was sold for about $3000, but still expensive. If you take a look at the price of the C4 model, that could already buy you a car. So I guess the price wasn’t the reason of their success.

While reading some articles about the first IBM PC’s (5100 and 5150), I have read some advantages it had over its competitors. IBM PC’s during their time was not the most powerful PC, but it had a feature that no other PC had. It gave the owners/users the ability to “upgrade” their PC’s or in other words it was expandable. There were expansion slots on the main board that allowed users to add memory modules, connect serial and/or parallel peripherals, etc. I think that IBM’s idea was brilliant. If they had not done this, and a component of a PC dies out, you can consider your PC as junk. Also, I think that everyone wants to get something that they can customize, people like customizing things, from cars, to cellphones, even computers.

IBM also implemented the “open architecture”. They sold the “IBM PC Technical Reference Manual” which some source codes written on the computers ROM, also I think that the manual contained the Op Codes (for low level programming) so that other developers may create hardware and software that can be used for IBM PC’s. I think that what they did was something that the other computer companies have thought of also, but have thought of as a downfall. Because if you show your design to others, they might just copy it and steal it from you, but IBM did it, and it became a factor of their success.

One last thing that I think lead to the success of IBM is the fact that their computers were highly available. There were more than 190 stores of Computerland that already existed when IBM released the PC’s which lead to the immediate widespread distribution of IBM’s computers.

I believe that IBM had a great influence on how computers, computer hardware, and software are made nowadays. First of all, modern computers allow the owners/users to customize them, they could add memory, add PCI devices, add a video card and more, they could even change the processor. For me, a computer that allows upgrades or its parts to be replaced are the real General Purpose Computers because if you can add devices to your computer, you could do virtually anything, it is just limited by the number of sockets or ports on your motherboard. I still remember my first laptop, it was a Pentium I 133 (about 10 years ago) whenever I see new technology on the television or in the magazines, I would feel bad because I couldn’t get that for my laptop. I was limited to what my laptop had originally. Nowadays, it’s already possible, there are laptops which allows you to add devices internally (like PCI devices but the laptop version), and I think that this became available because they saw that this is what the people need like what IBM anticipated before.

Nowadays, open-source programs can be found almost anywhere. One of the most popular open source programs is Linux. Look at how great it is now, it is because of the efforts of a lot of people sharing their ideas on how to improve the OS more. I think that IBM made the right move by opening their source code to the public (at least the contents of the BIOS). I think that their intention was to allow the programmers to study how their machine works in order for them to create programs for that machine, but maybe during their time, when they released their source codes, other programmers may have found bugs and reported those bugs to them which may have improved the software of IBM’s PC’s.

Sources

· http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC

· http://oldcomputers.net/

· http://www.pseriestech.org/gallery/data/501/historyofibm.gif