Thanks for the memory ... bytes

From gawky box to child's play in 20 years - CHRIS BARTON reports on the PC revolution.

When the new machine entered his workplace in 1981, Colin Eastabrook didn't see it as something that would change the world.

"I thought it was a great little toy because it could do things dumb terminals couldn't," says the 36-year IBM veteran who still has an original in his office.

He turns it on and slips a museum-piece 5 1/4-inch floppy disk into one of the two drives. A few seconds later green text glares on screen. After all these years it still goes. The cursor pulses patiently, waiting for its master to type its next command.

Hard to believe this ugly beige box - born on August 12, 1981, and introduced to the world with a touch of whimsy in TV and print ads featuring Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp - started a revolution. Happy 20th birthday PC.

Consultant Gail La Grouw didn't start using a PC until 1987, but her first experience pre-dates the IBM PC birth.

"It was around 1978 when my brother-in-law decided this was the greatest thing happening and became a PC programming junkie. I was more impressed by the negative impact it was having on his marriage than how it might change the world. His wife, of course, had to endure this - we found he sort of left our planet. Computing was all he talked about."

Could this have been one of the first recorded cases of geek evolution in New Zealand? That was the year Atari announced the Atari 400 and 800 personal computers. A year earlier Apple Computer had introduced the Apple II - which for many is the real birth of the personal computing age.

But when you count the numbers, it's the machines which can trace their lineage to the IBM PC (Intel chip and Microsoft operating system) that hold sway in a world of 500 million or so PCs.

In this world Apple, despite its ardent fans, is a 3 per cent niche player with the myriad "Wintel" (Windows and Intel) brands - Dell, Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Toshiba to name a few - accounting for the rest.

History aside, both Eastabrook and La Grouw agree the machine has wrought huge changes in their working and home lives.

Right from the start Eastabrook used his PC connected to a network - in his case as a window to gaze into a mainframe computer's insides and automatically report back its status.

"It was being used to run like a dumb mainframe terminal, but I did try and use the PC side. I remember I got a game to run on it."

But it wasn't until 1985, when he had a later model "XT" machine at home, that he really began to see it as something with its own intelligence. Using the "PC-side" meant harnessing the machine's extraordinary standalone cleverness.

His use expanded to include word-processing - "my Christmas card list" - spreadsheets and connecting to work via a modem, although the connection speed "was really too slow to work from home".

There were also significant milestones. Like what was he going to do with the 30 megabytes of storage his "AT" machine provided.

"It was a big step. People began to realise they could store huge amounts of data and get it back again."

Then there was the move to multimedia (sound and graphics) - something Eastabrook installed himself into his "486" when he got a multimedia kit as Christmas present.

"When I finally got the sound card and the CD-Rom to work it was 2 am and I had the speakers up a bit loud. My wife yelled from the bedroom, 'Turn that thing off'."

He remembers, too, seeing a video for the first time when he played Microsoft Encarta's CD-Rom encyclopaedia's version of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge Disaster of 1940.

"I'd read about how the wind made that bridge fall down, but actually seeing it made it more real."

La Grouw points out that despite her brother-in-law's programming obsession, his marriage survived and he went on to develop a highly successful accounting program.

"His basic secondary school education did not bring out his ability. Computing was something he clicked to quite easily and his true high intelligence came out."

She began using a PC herself about 1987, initially her husband's, then had her first home PC. Their work involved several different investment areas, so calculating with a spreadsheet was the first demonstration of the PC's awesome number-crunching power.

"Being able to calculate 'what-if' scenarios, and being able to manipulate these during boardroom strategy and negotiations, just seemed mind-boggling. The thrill was almost game-like. We used this a lot for our own investments."

La Grouw then started her own consulting business from home - something that would have been impossible without a PC.

"Having a PC was almost like having an office in a box."

The PC was invaluable, too, when doing her degree by correspondence in 1992. But despite the rewards for perseverance, the change to a wordprocessor didn't come easily.

"Although being able to edit and move text around was fantastic, I have to admit that I would lose myself in a 40-page document and generally resorted to printing it out, then physically cutting the sections and moving them around to act as a template for reorganising on screen," she says.

Around 1995 she exploited the PC's number-crunching power again, buying "one of these super algorithmic programs which downloaded the ASX [Australian Stock Exchange] every night and told me what shares to buy, based on my parameters."

But for both Eastabrook and La Grouw the arrival of the internet in the mid-90s, coupling standalone computing power with communication, was by far the most significant advance.

Eastabrook always had his PC connecting to something - a mainframe, IBM's global network or a modem. Now he could connect to the world. The web is also the perfect place to indulge his personal interests.

The background "wallpaper" on his PC screen features the latest downloaded image from the Hubble telescope. Like most, he uses the net for e-mail, but he also finds it incredibly useful for finding esoteric information - for instance, when his daughter needed the words to Silent Night - in German.

For La Grouw the net has been extremely helpful in facing some "rather unique family health challenges" - enabling her to find details about a rare form of cancer affecting some relatives to keep them better informed with specialist treatment. The net has also made her laptop PC more portable.

"It goes everywhere with me, even when I go away with friends. It's a flexibility that's very valuable to me as I generally do not get extended annual holidays so take gaps when I can."

For her, portable computing has transformed her lifestyle.

" I can be lying in bed with a back strain, doing business as usual. My work time is not organised by the Monday to Friday working week. Sometimes I start work at 3 am if I can't sleep, or have some international business to do, or just have a bright idea. Then I go off and play tennis at 10 am, or take all Wednesday off just to walk in the sunshine."

So is there any downside to this "great little toy?" Not as far as these two fans are concerned - although both have evolved creative mechanisms to deal with the stresses of the information age.

For Eastabrook, that meant getting rid of the TV from home and getting the information his family needed by other means such as newspapers, radio and the PC. He doesn't have a mobile phone, preferring a pager. Why? Because he doesn't like being interrupted when he's on the computer.

For La Grouw, the answer to the potential tyranny of a portable office that never sleeps lies in the off-switch and turning the phone's ringer down.

"If I want private time I remove myself."

As for the future, both see the PC very much in it - albeit in a different form.

"The PC will still be there, but may not be just a PC. It's also likely to be a TV and videophone," says Eastabrook.

La Grouw sees her sleek laptop with it's seductive, 4.2m colour screen lasting for some time. But she also sees an even more mobile future with short hop, wire-free technologies such as Bluetooth making life easier for connecting between devices and the internet.

And yes, once the screen technology is improved, she can see herself working from a mobile phone or, scarily, some sort of "wearable computer".