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HIGHLIGHTS IN COMPUTING HISTORY
ENIAC
1945: ENIAC. One of forefather of today's digital computers, ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator) was built at the University of Pennsylvania between 1943 and 1945 with funding from the US War Department.

ENIAC filled a 20 by 40 foot room, weighed 30 tons, and used more than 18,000 vacuum tubes. When operating, the ENIAC was silent but the vacuum tubes generated 174,000 watts of heat! Only half of ENIAC is visible in picture.

KENBAK
 1971: Kenbak-1. This was the first personal computer and was advertised for sale at $750. Designed by John V. Blankenbaker using standard medium-scale and small-scale integrated circuits, the Kenbak-1 had 256-bytes of memory and used switches for input and lights for output. In 1973, Kenbak Corp. closed down after selling only 40 machines.

 
TV TYPEWRITER
 1973: TV Typewriter. Designed by Don Lancaster, the TV Typewriter provided the first display of alphanumeric information on an ordinary television set. It used $120 worth of electronics components, and the original design included two memory boards and could generate and store 512 characters as 16 lines of 32 characters. A 90-minute cassette tape provided supplementary storage for about 100 pages of text.
ALTO
 1974: The Alto. As with so many 'modern' computing inovations, the Alto was designed at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. It was the first computer with a built-in mouse and the first to use menus and icons as well as the first computer to allow the user to work with several files simultaneously, each in separate 'windows'. It could also link to a local area network.

Although Xerox never sold the Alto commercially, it gave several of them away to universities and its features were the inspiration for the Apple Macintosh and later, Microsoft Windows.
ALTAIRE
 1975: Altair 8800. The January edition of Popular Electronics featured the Altair 8800 computer kit, based on Intel´s 8080 microprocessor, on its cover. Within weeks of the computer´s debut, customers inundated the manufacturing company, MITS, with orders. Bill Gates and Paul Allen licensed BASIC as the software language for the Altair. Ed Roberts invented the 8800 — which sold for $297, or $395 with a case — and coined the term "personal computer." The machine came with 256 bytes of memory (expandable to 64K) and an open 100-line bus structure that evolved into the S-100 standard. In 1977, MITS sold out to Pertec, which continued producing Altairs through 1978.
APPLE II
 1977: Apple II. This became an instant success when released in 1977 with its printed circuit motherboard, switching power supply, keyboard, case assembly, manual, game paddles, A/C powercord, and cassette tape with the computer game "Breakout". When hooked up to a color television set, the Apple II produced brilliant color graphics.
OSBOME
 1981: Osborne I. Adam Osborne completed the first portable computer, the Osborne I, which weighed 24 pounds and cost $1,795. The price made the machine especially attractive, as it included software worth about $1,500. The machine featured a 5-inch display, 64 kilobytes of memory, a modem, and two 5 1/4-inch floppy disk drives.

In April 1981, Byte Magazine Editor in Chief Chris Morgan mentioned the Osborne I in an article on "Future Trends in Personal Computing." He wrote: "I recently had an opportunity to see the Osborne I in action. I was impressed with it´s compactness: it will fit under an airplane seat. (Adam Osborne is currently seeking approval from the FAA to operate the unit on board a plane.) One quibble: the screen may be too small for some people´s taste."
COMMADORE 64
 1982: Commodore 64. The C64, as it was better known, sold for $595, came with 64KB of RAM and featured impressive graphics. Thousands of software titles were released over the lifespan of the C64. By the time the C64 was discontinued in 1993, it had sold more than 22 million units and is recognized by the 2006 Guinness Book of World Records as the greatest selling single computer model of all time.
MACINTOSH
 1984: The Macintosh. Apple Computer launched the Macintosh, the first successful mouse-driven computer with a graphical user interface, with a single $1.5 million commercial during the 1984 Super Bowl. Based on the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, the Macintosh originally sold for $2,500.

Apple´s commercial played on the theme of George Orwell´s "1984" and featured the destruction of Big Brother with the power of personal computing found in a Macintosh. Applications that came as part of the package included MacPaint, which made use of the mouse, and MacWrite, which demonstrated WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) word processing.
 
TIP OF THE DAY
Select text vertically in Microsoft Word
If you hold down the [ALT] key before dragging the cursor, you will be able to select text vertically as well as horisontally.
Microsoft Word
 
SECURITY WATCH
Microsoft users urged to patch now
13th February 2008
Experts at Sophos have advised companies to keep up-to-date with the latest Microsoft security patches and consider the benefits of Network Access Control (NAC) in light of the announcement of critical security flaws affecting the Windows operating system – READ MORE.
 
IN THE NEWS
Firefox Still Top Dog?
Statistics from the Web developer's site www.w3schools.com show that Firefox was used by 44% of their November visitors – this maintains Firefox as their most popular browser, but Google's Chrome is making fast gains and reached just over 20% for the first time.
Other statistics show that Internet Explorer is still the most commonly used browser worldwide, but continues to loose popularity, dropping by up to 10% in the last twelve months. These statistics show that the browser gaining most is (again) Google's Chrome.
If you haven't tried them yet, DOWNLOAD Firefox or Chrome.

The MacBook Air is 'Ere
Advertised as the "World's Thinnest Notebook", the MacBook Air has a 13.3 inch screen and weighs just 3 lbs. It's a good-looking machine with some nice new ideas, but is it the next big innovation in wireless computing - HAVE A LOOK and decide for yourself.