PC World's 25 Greatest PCs

On August 12th 1981, IBM announced its first PC. I remember the news vividly--and what I remember most of all is that I didn't find it all that exciting. I'd been interested in personal computers for several years, and as a high school student, I couldn't find much in Big Blue's system to interest me. It was too expensive for home use, blandly utilitarian, and lacking in fun features like animation and sound capabilities.

What bored me back then helped make the original IBM PC one of the most successful machines of its era, and one of the most important computers of all time. And hey, it created a need for a certain computer magazine which was launched in 1982 and is still alive and kicking in print and online.

And so to celebrate the IBM PC's 25th anniversary, we decided to pick the 25 Greatest PCs of All Time. (We also asked veteran PCWer and PC watcher Lincoln Spector to write an additional piece about the IBM PC and its place in history.)

Edited by Melissa Perenson, with opinionated contributions from lots of PCW staffers, our honors list doubles as a history of the whole personal computer revolution--which started with 1975's MITS Altair and continues to this day.

We had so much fun choosing winners that we had trouble limiting ourselves to 25 models. So we didn't--our story also includes quicker looks at 25 near-great computers.

I'm guessing that just about nobody will agree 100% with our rankings, although between our 25 greats and 25 near-greats, I think we've done a good job of rounding up most of the truly significant systems. Anyhow, take a look at our choices, including our pick of the #1 PC of all time--which wasn't one that was ever covered by PC World, by the way--and let us know what you think, via a comment here or in the Comments feature you'll find in the story itself. Let the debate begin. (And if you tried to read the story on our site earlier today and had trouble, our apologies: We had some technical glitches which we believe we've ironed out.)