100
GREATEST OF ALL TIME4 MAXIMUMPC DECEMBER 2007
44
NAPSTER (1999) Shawn
Fanning made history in more
ways than one with this P2P app/service.
Everything from iTunes to BitTorrent owes
its existence to Napster, and for that, Mr.
Fanning, we thank you.43
MICROSOFT INTELLIMOUSE
EXPLORER 3.0 (2003)
Microsoft itself refers to the IME 3.0’s
comfort and control as “legendary,” and
we won’t argue with that. This mouse
fi nally made optical sensors the standard
for PC mice. It was so popular Microsoft
recently reissued it.42
386 ENHANCED MODE (1992)
The beginning of multitask-
ing! 386 Enhanced Mode let you use
your newfangled 80386-based PC plus
Windows 3.1 to run DOS apps in multiple
resizable windows.41
WINDOWS 98 SECOND EDITION
(1999) While Win98 was an evo-
lutionary improvement over Win95, Win
SE was a must-have upgrade because of
one key feature: It let you use USB with far
fewer headaches.40
COMMODORE
64 (1982) Those of you who
were too broke to buy an Apple got one
of these $595 jobbies instead. Boulder
Dash FTW!39
EPSON MX-80 (1982) Is there
any sound so gratifying as the
deafening whirr/grind of a dot-matrix print-
er? Epson’s MX-80 made cheap printing
available to the masses, who didn’t seem
to mind its low-grade quality or the noise
as long as they could keep churning out
rad Print Shop banners.38
IBM THINKPAD 700 (1992)
Portable computing was a decid-
edly unpleasant affair for a decade, with
obese, underpowered laptops ruling a
small market. That changed with IBM’s
entry into the business: the groundbreak-
ing ThinkPad, which fi nally proved that
powerful computers need not be the size
of a server room.37
APPLE II (1977) Steve Jobs’s
real breakthrough was the water-
shed Apple II, which got enthusiasts into
home
comput-
ing with
an afford-
able,
expand-
able
machine.36
CD-R (1988) We
could read optical discs (see
#26), why not write to them as well? CD-R
rapidly made optical the medium of choice
for backups, sneakernet fi le swapping,
and every other storage need.35
SOCKET 7 (1994) Once upon
a time, all CPUs worked with the
same motherboard: That time was 1994,
when Socket 7 allowed you to plug in not
just Intel CPUs, but also AMD’s, Cyrix’s,
and other vendors’ chips.40
COMMODORE
64 (1982)Those of you who