PC evolution

The news that IBM is selling its PC business to a Chinese manufacturer brings an era to an end.

I recall reporting on the great divide between IBM and other compatible manufacturers over MicroChannel Architecture and OS/2. Remember those issues? Then, I recall the mirth when IBM hired the Natural History Museum in London for a tenth anniversary party for its PC. It could represent evolution, but we found the conjunction with dinosaur fossils too easy to riducule.

I later worked for Xyratex, a management buyout of IBM UK’s fixed disk manufacturing business. The selling off of component businesses is not new – but how many predicted that the PC would so rapidly become a component business?