Columns

We're celebrating 100 issues this month. It's been an amazing period for the PC, during which computing has wormed its way into virtually every aspect of life. You can now do almost any office or personal information-related task with some form of desktop, portable or handheld computing device. Whether you want to organise your diary, edit professional video or run an e-commerce site, PCs are there - be it in the foreground, middle ground or background.

In 1994, when we launched, many of these tasks were still well beyond a PC's capabilities - you needed horrendously expensive proprietary equipment or it just wasn't possible. The Internet, for example, was still essentially an information exchange tool for techies, not the mainstream commercial network it has become.

It's been a fascinating eight and a third years, filled with competitive struggles between technologies. Many once-promising products have fallen by the wayside, and the last couple of years have been tough for computing in general, with the dotcom crash casting dark clouds over anything even vaguely related to high technology.

But what jumped out at me when I browsed through past issues of PC Pro, was how much certain areas of IT have changed from diverse markets to being dominated by one or two firms. Microsoft's dominance wasn't sealed when we launched. Within a year, though, the writing was on the wall. Our review of OS/2 Warp in issue 3 sounded its death knell, and Office 95 and its

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successors seemed unassailable by WordPerfect or Lotus SmartSuite. Microsoft had the most credible OS and office apps for the burgeoning 32-bit PC world, and that remains to this day.

Chip monkeying

It's a similar story when you look at the CPU. For long periods since PC Pro was launched, the history of the processor has essentially been the account of Intel's own technological advancements. Not until the last couple of years has any company offered serious long-term competition to the maker of the first ever microprocessor.

In 1994, a decent performance PC would run Intel's 486DX2/66, and the Pentium/90 was the quickest CPU around. Our second issue reviewed one contender - the ill-fated NexGen chip, running at 84MHz. But it was no match for the Pentium/90, and the Dan system we reviewed was still over £2,000, comparable to a PC based on Intel's flagship. Intel kept the pressure on, already ramping the Pentium to 100MHz for our third issue.

Enhancements like the Triton chipset, which we first saw in issue 6 (April 1995), kept performance increasing, and Intel was still hiking up the clock speeds in quick succession. The Pentium/120 arrived in issue 8 (June 1995), and the Pentium/133 two months later. At this point, we were already considering the implications of the next Intel generation - then known as the P6 CPU. By issue 14 (December 1995), we were testing a few 150MHz versions. This was Intel's first CPU optimised for running 32-bit code, whereas the Pentium - albeit 32-bit internally - was optimised for 16-bit. Our mixed 16-bit and 32-bit benchmarks were still 30 per cent faster on the P6 than on a Pentium/133.

By the time a worthy Intel competitor arrived in issue 18 (April 1996), the Pentium had reached 166MHz. The Carrera Jaguar 166+, with its 133MHz Cyrix 686 166+ chip, was faster than any Pentium/166 we'd seen. However, Intel still held the performance crown. The P6 - by then branded the Pentium Pro - arrived the following issue running at 200MHz and achieved a benchmark score 50 per cent faster than a Pentium/166.