Twenty years of PC power

In August 1981, the IBM PC was launched - creating a configuration that was to become the world's most enduring and widely used hardware standard. Anand Parthasarathy takes a nostalgic look back at 2 decades of personal computing -

and suggests where the technology is headed. IN THE summer of 1980, two executives from IBM contacted a small Seattle startup called Microsoft and asked its two nerdy owners Bill Gates and Paul Allen to create a software package that was required to run a new desktop microcomputer that ``Big Blue'' was putting together. Unlike the mainframe computers than had made IBM a global computing giant, the new machine as yet un-named would not use hardware developed in-house. It would be built from off-the- shelf hardware and would run on a third-party processor, the 8088 chip that Intel was due to release, marking the transition from 8-bit to 16-bit computing. Microsoft was already known for its various flavours of the BASIC programming language. It had created the Basic software for the world's first microcomputer-in-a-kit, the Altair 8800, sold in 1979 by a small company based in New Mexico, called MITS. Soon it had cornered the market in platform-specific versions of Basic - for Apple, Commodore and Radio Shack.

Now IBM was asking Microsoft to create an entire operating system, with a version of Basic thrown in. What it gave IBM was Micro Soft Disk Operating System - or MS DOS. By mid 1981 the two key engineers at IBM -Bill Lowe and Don Estridge had taken the project from conception to execution: an amazing feat. In a decision that was to have historic consequences, IBM decided that the computer would not be manufactured by inhouse alone: the configuration of the new microcomputer would be available for licence to other manufacturers, and they could make their deals with Microsoft to provide them MSDOS and obtain the microchip that lay at the heart of the machine, from Intel. IBM for its part called the operating system PCDOS. Why? Because it had decided to dub the new product a Personal Computer.

The IBM PC - and the clones that were quickly launched by dozens of licensed manufacturers - became a quick favourite worldwide. That first machine had just one MB of memory and a 5.5 inch floppy drive. But in next to no time, dozens of software developers began to write utilities that ran under MSDOS. Apple Computers on the other hand, made a tragic business decision to NOT licence third party manufacture of its hardware, or use of its software, for its frontline platform the Apple -II and the machine that was so ahead of its time in 1984: the Macintosh with its mouse- operated, menu and icon driven environment. It stuck to this decision till 1995 - by which time the IBM PC had swamped the market and reduced the much superior Apple Mac to a share of less than 10 percent of all PCs sold.

Indian pioneers

Looking back at those pioneering years of the PC, one realizes that only a shortsighted and restrictive import policy hampered the emergence of a mass consumer culture in computers. In the last years before the PC, the PDP-08 and -011 manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation, were the great microcomputer engines of the day. To circumvent the bizarre import restrictions of the day, this correspondent recollects indenting these machines as a ``Digital Processing Oscilloscope'' and buying them from Tektronix, who added an oscilloscope and used the PDP-11 to enhance it. Even before the IBM PC appeared in 1981, HCL, had introduced India to the desktop computer - which it called the ``Workhorse''. This was based on an earlier operating system CP/M-86 but for the first time it enabled Indian users for less than Rs 1 lakh, to enter the world of desktop computing, by shrewdly bundling free, with the hardware, its own version of the WordStar wordprocessor, which it called ``Secretry'' (no names more than 8 letters!); a database clone of ``DBase'' and the predecessor of the famous Lotus 1-2-3 spread sheet, called VisiCalc.

Within months of the IBM PC hitting the market in late 1981, Indian companies were offering their own versions: if prices were as low as the stiff tariffs allowed, that was due to the business savvy of our own PC pioneers: Shiv Nadar of HCL, Sivasankaran of Sterling Computers and Raj Saraf of Zenith. Their IBM PC models were soon joined by offerings from the up and coming Wipro, as well as a company now sadly out of this business: DCM Data Systems who offered the Tandy TRS model.

Thanks to these private entrepreneurs, India was never too far back in the global technology race. The PC-AT ( for advanced technology) based on the 6 MHZ Intel 80286, came in 1983, followed by the first machines based on the 16 MHz 80386DX in 1986, from Compaq. The time lag of a few months to reach the market here, had one salutary effect: most Indian corporate users were spared the costly mistake that was IBM's 1992 effort to put out a proprietary PC - the PS/2 and its new software the OS/2. This was a notable flop - because the original DOS -based IBM PC was to give way in 1987 to Microsoft's ``made for dummies'' imitation of the Macintosh environment - what it called ``Windows''. Even before that happened, users found themselves able to use a rich variety of applications: The pathbreaking ``PageMaker'' desk top publishing (DTP) software from Aldus; the picture editing tools like ``Illustrator'' and ``Photoshop'' from Adobe; an improved word processor, WordPerfect - all of which ran on what was to be some of the most durable versions of MSDOS - the releases between 3.1 and 5.0.

By 1992, laptops had given way to the lighter-on-the-knees notebooks, with Apple launching PowerBook 145. But the problems of power consumption have continued to bug portable PC developers - till last year, when a slim notebook ran on the path breaking ``Crusoe'' processor. Meanwhile classic Macs had given way to the translucent, multicoloured world of the iMacs and Apple retained the fierce loyalty of its small clientele by reinventing the contemporary versions ( built around the PowerPC chip and its latest avatar the G4) as a ``cool'' platform for high- end video and multimedia freaks. The March of the Macintosh, hit a road block in 2000 when the daringly different ``G4 Cube'', with a radically new physical design, sold so few numbers that the line was closed only a few weeks ago.

Meanwhile ``Small Is Beautiful'' became a PC makers' mantra, as they tried to shrink the key functions onto a handheld machine. While Apple's entry, the Newton was a flop, better luck attended the launch of 3-Com's ``Palm'' series which soon became a name synonymous with handheld computing. Incredibly the official entry of Palms to India took almost five years - and the first models priced in the range of Rs 7000 - Rs 18,000 have been launched here only a month ago. Microsoft, whose revisions of the Windows operating system from '95 to '98 to '98 edition 2 to Me ( for Millennium) attracted a lot of adverse media attention, is now slated to launch another PC operating system upgrade in October with Windows XP ( for eXPerience). Last year, in a canny bid to extends its reach, the company specified a new hand held platform - the Pocket PC - and manufacturers like HP, Compaq and Handspring were soon offering their hardware made to the Microsoft design. The catch was that most things on the Pocket PC were optimised for Microsoft's own versions of popular applications from browser to email to music and video players. There have been rumblings from proponents of ``free'' and ``open'' ie non proprietary software systems, led by the Linux brigade which has tried to provide a viable alternative. ``Tried'' is right; It is too early to apportion any success, because two decades of a domineering DOS/Wintel (for Windows and Intel) cannot easily be wished away.

Many of the irritants of the Windows environment: startup and shutdown that takes ages; frequent interruptions caused by conflicting software environments... are now accepted as a necessary price to pay. But futuristic designs suggested by makers like Intel are not just a case of way-out form factors: they include features like ``quickstart'' that are already off the drawing board - but are yet to reach the hassled consumer.

On the domestic front, a sharp reduction in global component prices, has done something that the government never achieved, by any proactive measure of its own: it made the average multimedia home PC affordable to a burgeoning middle class eager to empower its children with the best tools to face a fiercely competitive job market.

There is an element of poetic justice in the fact that today, the ``desi'' configurations offered by a HCL, a Wipro or a Zenith, are once more giving the major international PC makers like Compaq, HP, Dell and IBM a run for their money in India. But on their other flank they have to deal with the fact that 53 out of 100 PCs sold in India are unbranded or local brands assembled by small scale outfits who work on tight margins but deliver value for money to the cost-conscious customer. Within a year these small assemblers may yet provide the Indian customer something that the government has only been promising: a truly Indian language computing system as a free option.

In an environment where the dotcom disaster of 2000-01 has for the first time in 15 years seen a fall in the offtake of PCs worldwide, the humble Indian consumer, for whom a PC represents a sizable investment of 4-8 months wages, has bucked the worldwide trend: the market here actually grew here by about 31 per cent in the last fiscal year, to register sales of 1.9 million units (MAIT figures). The present PC population in India is estimated at around 5.5 - 6 million.

That may not sound impressive when weighed against a population of one billion.

But bare numbers sometimes hide the truth. The PC revolution has already occurred here - even if it crept in unnoticed.

Who would have imagined that 26.6 percent of all households in Pune today own a PC (IDC figures)? Or that Coimbatore and Kochi are reckoned to have the country's largest growth potential in PC population this year?

Or that in 2001, a small team in Bangalore would boldly attempt the commercial launch of an ``appropriate computer'', tailored for our unique situation - the happily named ``Simputer''?

The neglected secondary metros of India with their higher proportion of educated and salaried families may yet emerge as the `agni asthras' that will ensure that the quiet revolution of the last twenty years of the PC transforms into the technology miracle of the next two decades.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Science & Tech
Previous : Shedding light on DNA transcription
Next     : New seed-setting aggregatum variety