Early PC Adoption

Discussions revolve around the historical timeline of personal computers becoming mainstream household items, contrasting their past status as novelties or non-ubiquitous in the 1970s-1990s with modern ubiquity.

➡️ Stable 0.5x Hardware
4,506
Comments
20
Years Active
5
Top Authors
#4332
Topic ID

Activity Over Time

2007
7
2008
23
2009
41
2010
93
2011
95
2012
159
2013
151
2014
146
2015
198
2016
171
2017
209
2018
256
2019
263
2020
334
2021
417
2022
501
2023
474
2024
448
2025
484
2026
38

Keywords

IT canonical.org MIPS FOSS PC catb.org RJE DRAWTO programming.html box.html computers pcs 90s pc 80s late 90s computing computer weren 25 years ago

Sample Comments

enupten Sep 8, 2014 View on HN

It probably was when computers were less popular :)

andrepd Apr 10, 2015 View on HN

Wasn't personal computing ubiquitous for two decades now?

ants_everywhere Jul 27, 2025 View on HN

That's how computers were before the rise of personal computers

mettamage Jun 9, 2023 View on HN

Wasn’t this the same with computers? I remember that people didn’t want to use them about 25 years ago

pilsetnieks Nov 22, 2017 View on HN

Those were the 80s computers though. We've gone a long way since then.

avereveard Jul 2, 2021 View on HN

At a time when pc weren't household items, that came about quite later

LtWorf Dec 3, 2024 View on HN

"What's a computer" was less than 10 years ago.

bluejekyll Jul 5, 2017 View on HN

Only in computers is the distant past 25 years ago...

ekianjo Apr 8, 2015 View on HN

Probably more than now because computing was not really "mainstream" at the time. Before Win95 at least.

BoiledCabbage Jun 27, 2017 View on HN

It was, on computers 20+ years ago.