A week might be a long time in politics but in the technology world ten years is equivalent to aeons. In fact, looking back at some of the technology of ten years ago, it seems like something out of the Jurassic era. At the time a Pentium MMX PC running Windows 95 Service Pack 2 may have been the cutting edge but if you fired up one of those machines now you’d probably be distinctly under-whelmed.
During those times there’s been plenty of false dawns that we were assured were equivalent to the second coming. Anyone still using one of those black PCs, sorry (in fact I’m pretty sure that the company behind that particular gem no longer sells PCs). Or the Unison set top box that allowed you to surf the net and check your email from your TV at the blistering fast speeds offered by a dial-up modem.
Fortunately though, the false dawns have not outnumbered the positive developments that have changed the landscape for PC users. Back in 1995 I was connecting to the Net with a 14.4Kbits/sec modem and was considering upgrading to this new Windows 95 operating system from Windows 3.11 which was running on my Packard Bell PC. That PC had 16Mbyte of RAM, an Intel 486 processor and if I remember correctly a 500Mbyte hard drive. Adding new hardware was a tricky task and peripherals connected via serial or parallel cables. Digital cameras were still low quality and high cost, MP3 was a term that still hadn’t left the labs and the idea that a mobile phone would have almost as much computing power as my trusty Packard Bell and be able to synchronise data with a PC seemed like science fiction.
Today peripherals are truly plug and play with USB 2.0 ensuring a high speed connection, 200Gbyte hard drives can be purchased in low cost supermarkets for less than a couple of hundred euro, Windows XP is the de facto standard both at home and in the office and I’m seriously considering upgrading my laptop to a gigabyte of RAM. The devices that surround and connect to our PCs such as MP3 players, digital cameras, mobile phones have become as important to us as the PC itself, which is increasingly likely to be a laptop that we bring with us as we please.
In the intervening years there have been many important events here in Ireland that have shaped the way we purchase and use our PCs, all of which have been documented by PC Live! Looking back through the archives I’ve chosen what I consider to be 10 of the most important of those events. Here they are in roughly chronological order with the reasons why they have had such an impact.
1. The launch of Windows 95
Microsoft’s Windows 3.x may have been the operating system of choice for most PC users but with the launch of the 32-bit Windows 95 the boys from Redmond were determined to become a household name and deliver on their dream of a PC on every desk. As home to its European operations Ireland was going to be an important part of that launch with no less a personage than Bill Gates coming to Dublin for Windows World 1995 as part of the launch publicity. 5,000 people turned up for that event in the RDS and ensured that Windows became front page news even for the mainstream media.
For those who came to computing post-95 it might be hard to believe that things like the Start button, right button mouse clicking and CD ROM autoplay were seen for the first time in this version of Windows. Technically the big news was the Windows 95 was a 32-bit operating system which allowed for proper multitasking. At the time Apple fans scoffed that Windows 95 = Macintosh 89 and looking back Windows 95 was limited in many ways but it was a massive step up from previous versions.
2. AOL introduces unlimited-use pricing plan
It’s hard to believe that back in 1996 the idea of getting unlimited Internet access for a fixed fee each month was considered revolutionary. Remember this was in the days before broadband had moved out of the business world and into the home and squawking modems connected to phone lines were how we all connected to the largely text-only Net. AOL’s decision to offer an “all you can eat” pricing plan for $19.95 per month, which resulted in its servers swamped by Net heads who literally left their PCs connected all month long, had little direct impact here but the in-direct effects were massive. The sudden surge in US users going online created a massive market for the many crazy e-commerce ideas launched in the following years (anyone for Pets.com?). And flat rate pricing became the holy grail for Irish internet users – sadly it was many years later before the ISPs stepped up to the plate and provided it.
3. Gateway 2000 comes and goes
It may seem hard to believe now but a quirky little company from South Dakota (where?) which shipped its PCs in boxes with a Friesian cow print was once the most popular brand of home PC in Ireland. Gateway 2000’s Dublin manufacturing and telesales operation may still lie empty on Dublin’s north side but its years in Ireland still have an impact on the local IT industry. Anyone who thinks Gateway simply took advantage of government grants and then got out when the pressure mounted is not seeing the whole picture. The company managed to launch the careers of hundreds of IT staff many of whom have gone on to senior management positions in both indigenous and multinational organisations. Not to mention the thousands of Gateway PCs around the country that are still in use.
4. PC World opens its first Irish store
Superstores packed with the latest consumer electronic goodies like PC World, Harvey Norman, Dixons and even Power City may be taken for granted in our out of town shopping centres these days but it’s not always been the case. When PC World opened for business in Blanchardstown in the late nineties there was palpable excitement at the range of electronic goodies that we would now be able to pick up on our Sunday afternoon shopping sprees. Dixons, the company that owns PC World as well as Currys, now has over 15 stores around the country trading under the three brands.
5. Microsoft launches Windows XP
Goodbye blue screen of death. Goodbye the three finger salute of
6. Launch of Star Office
Open source software was once solely the preserve of propellerheads who thought nothing of typing arcane commands in order to get a document off the network. Meanwhile the rest of us were happy to stick with easy to use commercial products from the likes of Microsoft, Corel and Adobe with their point and click interfaces. Linux, the open source operating system, may have some way to go before it starts becoming a viable option for the majority of PC users but most of us now think nothing of downloading and installing open source applications. Central to that change was the acquisition of the StarOffice suite of office applications by Sun Microsystems. Realising that it could never hope to compete with Microsoft Office it made the product open source as OpenOffice which is free to download and use. Many home and business users now avail of this powerful office suite which is also available with support for a relatively low cost as StarOffice from Sun.
7. Playstation 2 launch
The original Playstation may have had the ease of use and library of software that ensured it was a massive hit with the after-pub brigade but with the launch of its successor, and subsequent 64-bit offerings from Microsoft and Nintendo, consoles overtook PCs as the premier platform for computer games. Sure PCs may still be the weapon of choice for diehard fans of strategy and RPG games, but if the rest of us fancy a stint as Michael Schumacher or a stress-relieving shoot ‘em up session we turn to the box under the telly rather than the PC. With graphics capabilities that beat the Pentium III PCs on the market and features like USB connections and Internet access the Playstation 2 was the first of the next generation consoles to add a nail to the coffin of PC gaming.
8. Eircom launches DSL
It was a hell of a long time coming – Eircom executives had been talking it up off the record for at least four or five years and promising us that a commercial launch was only six months or so. In fact delaying tactics became something of a speciality for Telecom Eireann/Eircom executives in the late nineties as an increasingly disillusioned user base questioned why they were still waiting for the high speed internet access that the rest of the developed world took for granted. The consumer launch eventually happened in April 2003 and Eircom signed up 1,000 customers in the first week alone – proof positive that Irish internet users had been crying out for high speed always-on connections. Eircom, EsatBT, Perlico, Digiweb and the many other resellers of DSL, not to mention alternative products such as Irish Broadband’s wireless offerings, mean that over 150,000 of us now get access to high speed Internet access for less than EUR*40 a month.
9. Schools broadband
The Schools Broadband Access Program will see every school in the country provided with a broadband connection by the end of the year. While that in itself is a fairly significant milestone it is just the latest in a series of small steps that have improved the access of our children to education in the last ten years. Amongst those steps were the establishment of the National Centre for Technology Education in 1998 and the implementation of the Schools IT 2000 initiative which invested in hardware and training. While these and various private sector projects have seen some of our schools race ahead in their adoption of technology, it pales into significance compared to what it being invested in schools north of the border through the Classroom 2000 programme. Here’s hoping the next ten years see the government invest even more time and money into the use of technology by our school kids.
10. Compustore closes its doors
It’s not often that us hardened IT hacks feel emotional about technology but the passing of Compustore was certainly one of those moments. Founded in 1992 it was one of the first chains of PC and electronics stores to go nationwide. It was also one of the last Irish owned ones when it eventually closed the doors on its stores in October 2004. In the intervening twelve years it was a trailblazer on the local scene stocking many products exclusively and employing knowledgable and friendly staff. Sadly increased competition from online retailers and the general downturn in retail contributed to its ultimate demise.
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