When did PCs become common in the home?

[Norris]

My husband and I were discussing(agruing) about when people started using personal computers. So when did they become affordable that the everyday Joe Blow could afford them. I'm saying that around the first of the 1990's and my husband thinks that they were out in the 70's...NO WAY! Help solve our arguement...HAHA! I'm thinking that until Windows based operating systems came out noone really knew much what to do with a computer without formal training.

 

[tfcmasta97]

my mom got one for the house soon after I was born... like 1988~1990? She learned how to program a basic user interface so I could access my games, she said that computers were the future so it would be best to introduce us at an early age..... but she had to save up like $2500 for it at the time, which Im sure went a long way during those years.

Average home computers I think came around by the time they reached ~100+mhz?

 

[LS20]

uh...more like LATE 90s when the market penetration hit the majority of households...

not because of, but contemporaneous with, emachines and the ~500 PCs

 

[nakedfrog]

Define "common."
But I think the most agreeable answer is the mid/late 1990s.

 

[Cattlegod]

Originally posted by: nakedfrog
Define "common."
But I think the most agreeable answer is the mid/late 1990s.

 

[Vic]

Mid-late 90s. Pentium II/Win95 bundled with IE era. Dot-com boom.

 

[b0mbrman]

Depends how you define "common"

I had quite a few friends with them in the late 80s/early 90s

 

[Scarpozzi]

In my home? 1982.

 

[jr22jess]

Yesterday

 

[wetcat007]

Mid 90s

 

[state 08]

I have to agree with the poster above who said when PC's reached the 100Mhz range.

I got my first PC, along with many of my friends, with 133 MHz

 

[irishScott]

Mid 90s. Windows 95 was the first to bring it home (no pun intended), although my family had had a computer since the late 80s.

 

[MikeyLSU]

early to mid 90s.

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: nakedfrog
Define "common."
But I think the most agreeable answer is the mid/late 1990s.

Probably more on the 1996-1998 timeframe. By common I would assume 50% of households.

 

[xospec1alk]

when the original pentium came out...i forget when that was...early 90s?

my first computer was a 386SX33...not even a freaking DX...

 

[theprodigalrebel]

My family got its first computer in 1988 (a used Apple II). But yeah, it was around Windows 95 that they really, really started becoming popular.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Nerd families - late 80s/early 90s

Regular families - mid 90s/late 90s

 

[ITJunkie]

I would agree with the mid to late 90's crowd for when they became a "common" household item. Yes many people had them earlier but they weren't as much of a commodity item like they are now.
Your husbands idea of the 70's is somewhat true in that they were available but were pretty expensive. I believe Apple put out the I and ][ in 76 and 77. IBM released the "PC" in 81.
So, "affordable that the everyday Joe Blow could afford one" has to be mid to late 90's.

 

[b0mbrman]

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: nakedfrog
Define "common."
But I think the most agreeable answer is the mid/late 1990s.

Probably more on the 1996-1998 timeframe. By common I would assume 50% of households.

What % have them now?

 

[KarmaPolice]

I don't know. I was born in 1984 and have had a PC as long as I could remember. I know i had one even before i started kindergarten....then again my dad did work for IBM.

 

[Caecus Veritas]

late 80's to early 90's... if you remember, many studuents at that time were beginning to submit reports/homeworks typed up on home computers (those 8088xt's and then 286/386).

 

[KK]

I would have to say late 90s, probably 97-98 it became mainstream.

 

[50cent1228]

around 1995

 

[nakedfrog]

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello
Nerd families - late 80s/early 90s

Regular families - mid 90s/late 90s

Heh... IIRC, my dad brought home an Apple IIc almost as soon as they were available. He was a programmer for a while, my mom is a Java programmer now, and I'm a programmer...

 

[Norris]

OK so probably late 80's or 90's when people started actually using them at home. I tend to use my highschool years as a bench marks and I know that nobody had a computer or even thought about computers when I graduated from highschool in 81. So I know it's after then...in vocational training they weren't teaching anything computer related...only just typing stuff. Then I remember my sister bought an old word processor in the 80's because she already had kids so it had to be late 80s....I remember her daughter playing on it and she was probably 5 and was born in 83. They were selling off word processors at her job to get computers.