The first hard disk drives for microcomputers, made by Seagate Technology, held 5 megabytes of data (as opposed to a standard floppy's 1MB). It was metallic platter coated with magnetic material, which store the data.

The first optical data storage disk was developed by Philips. It had 60 times the capacity of a 5 1/4-inch floppy disk. A laser beam, in the track of a spiral, burned marks onto the disk to store the data. Until 1982, when Philips created magneto-optic disks (erasable optic disks), optic disks could not be overwritten. They were very useful for large amounts of data that did not need to be revised. On erasable optical disk, instead of recording information permanently by melting holes in the metal, the laser heats a spot to just below the metal's melting point, so that a magnet can reverse the direction of the metal.

IBM's first PC ran on Intel's 4.77 MHz 8088 microprocessor. It came with Microsoft's MS-DOS operating system.

Osborne I, created by Adam Osborne, was the first portable computer. It weighed 24 pounds, and could fit under an airplane seat. It had a low price of $1,795, considering it came with software worth almost $1,500. It had 64 KB of memory, and two 5 1/4 inch floppy disk drives. The screen's size seemed to be the only downfall, at 5-inches.

DN100, a workstation, was a powerful computer with a much lower price than minicomputers.

The first 3 1/2" floppy drives and diskettes were created by Sony. It was used by Hewlett-Packard in 1982, which helped it be the surviving format instead of the other tried possibilities, such as the 3 1/4", 3", and 3.9" formats.

Lisa was the first personal computer with a graphical user interface. It was based on Motorola's 68000 microprocessor. It came with 1 MB of Random Access Memory, a 12 inch monochrome monitor, two 5 1/4 in floppy disk drives, and a 5MB hard drive. The Lisa was too expensive, at $10,000, for success.

The Compaq Computer was the first to make PC clones. These clones could use the same software as the IBM PC. Compaq Computer Corp. had $111 million worth of sales the first year, more than any other business in America, for one year. These computers were nearly 100 percent compatible with the IBM PC.

Macintosh, was considered the first successful mouse-driven computer with a graphic user interface. It was based on the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, and included many of the qualities the Lisa had featured. It was a much lower price than the Lisa, at $2,500. The Macintosh also came with MacPaint and MacWrite software, both of which used the mouse. MacWrite was a "what you see is what you get" word processing program.

IBM released both PC Jr. and PC-AT. The PC Jr. was unsuccessful, but the PC-AT did very well. It was based on the Intel 80286 chip. The PC-AT was several times faster than, had more storage capacity than, included more RAM than the original PC. It's price was $4,000.

CD-ROMs, made by Philips and Sony, have so much capacity, that they are rarely filled. They can hold 550 megabytes of prerecorded data. "Grolier's Electronic Encyclopedia," came out the same year. The encyclopedia only filled up 12 percent of the space allowed.

The Connection Machine, developed by Daniel Hillis of Thinking Machines Corp., was a big advance in artificial intelligence. It could complete several billion operations per second. Each of 16,000 processors had its own memory linked with others. The way the processors could work together was a key point in the high artificial intelligence of the machine.

IBM's first RISC-based workstation, the PC/RT had 1 megabyte of RAM, a 1.2-megabyte floppy disk drive, and a 40-megabyte hard drive. It could perform 2 million instructions per second.

IBM's PS/2 computers included a 3 1/2-inch floppy disk drive and a video graphics array, and was based on Intel's 80386 chip. At the same time, IBM introduced OS/2 and operating system that allowed use of a mouse with IBMs. More than 1 million machines were sold by the end of he year. the company had shipped more

The NeXT, produced by Steve Jobs (who had left Apple to form a new company), at a price of $6,500, was too slow to be very successful. It was, however recognized as an important step in the construction of computers. The NeXT was the first personal computer with a drive for an optical storage disk, a digital processor allowing voice recognition, and object-oriented languages. The NeXT was based on Motorola's 68030 microprocessor, had 8 megabytes of RAM, and a 256-megabyte read/write optical disk storage.