Cover Story: 25 Years of PC Week/eWEEK

by Debra Donston

PC Week makes its debut.

With the Token-Ring LAN, 260 PCs could be linked over twisted-pair cabling.

An important day in e-mail history: Competing mail services—in this case, MCI Mail and CompuServe—link up.

The “Seeing the Future through Microsoft’s Windows” headline turned out to be prescient.

PC Week’s tagline changes from “The National Newspaper of IBM Standard Microcomputing” to “The National Newspaper of Corporate Microcomputing.”

IBM’s SAA era was short-lived, as industrywide standardization—as well as the client/server model—took hold.

PC Week’s tagline changes again, from “The National Newspaper of Corporate Microcomputing” to “The National Newspaper of Corporate Computing.”

The IBM/Apple pairing didn’t happen, but a brave new world was being born: the World Wide Web.

IBM and Microsoft officially end their cooperative work on operating systems development.

‘Outsider’ Lou Gerstner takes IBM reins.

Microsoft’s Windows 95 delay is one of many OS twists and turns that will bedevil enterprise IT managers in the years to come. 1994 was also notable as the year PC Week launched its Web site, www.pcweek.com.

IBM’s acquisition of Lotus gets a thumbs-up from IT.

In 1996, the Web enters the mainstream. Java takes off, but end users balk at thin-client computing.

Improved search and browser technology combine to make doing business on the Web more effective.

Compaq acquires Digital Equipment Corp., but, in hindsight, the bigger story is the smaller headline at lower right.

1999 marked PC Week’s 15th anniversary. But IT professionals probably remember it better for the remediations put into place to avoid a Y2K meltdown. In the end, disaster didn’t happen.

The issue dated May 8, 2000, marked the change from PC Week to eWEEK. The change was made to reflect broader technology coverage as well as the shift to Web-based computing.

The tragedy of 9/11 touched us all. eWEEK’s reporters and editors attempted to provide a measure of perspective on the events, and on the security, disaster recovery and business continuity planning systems that took on new meaning and importance in their wake.

eWEEK Labs’ tests of gear based on the then-nascent 802.11a spec show that wireless networking has the performance—not to mention easier setup and manageability—to support corporate apps.

Before SAAS—and Salesforce.com—became household (or at least corporate-hold) names.

The Labs pitted Microsoft Office against the open-source OpenOffice.com under real-world conditions. File format issues were a chief concern.

The calm before the Vista storm.

The greening of IT begins …

Companies face an increase in zero-day attacks.