Happy 30th Birthday to the IBM PC

The IBM PC has just celebrated its 30th birthday--and it's hard to believe that the personal computer is already three decades old. Early models had monochrome monitors and floppy disk storage. The early Apple Macintosh computers were smaller and boxier, with an easier-to-use graphical interface instead of the DOS system used in IBM models. IBM sold off its PC division to Lenovo in 2005, but Apple continues to innovate Macintosh computers and increase its market share year by year.

After the PC came many other electronic gadgets, some with specialized functions and others providing PC convenience in new "packaging."

Remember the hand-held personal digital assistant? Palm and Handspring made their names on this product. Once the darling of the computer world, the product wound up as a short-lived stepping stone to smartphones.

These days, laptops, netbooks, tablets, and smartphones are commonplace, coexisting with desktop computers at home and in the workplace. The big battle, currently, is among tablet computers, where Apple's iPad is the undisputed leader. Will tablets remain popular or will it turn out to be an intermediate step toward some other electronic device, the way PDAs paved the way for smartphones?