Announced in November 1983 and shipped in March 1984, the PCjr was IBM's first attempt at developing a home computer. With prices starting at $669, the IBM PCjr came with a 5.25-inch floppy disk drive, a battery-powered chiclet-type keyboard (with no numeric keypad), built-in color graphics, and a 4.77-MHz Intel 8088 CPU (which was relatively faster than other personal computers at the time). It was supposed to drive the home-use computer market, as the IBM PC did for the business market, but was discontinued two years later, due to the lack of adequate software and expansion slots as well as its uncomfortable keyboard.

Atari Mindlink
Never released (and for good reason), the Atari Mindlink was a video game controller for the Atari 2600 that the company claimed could read a player's mind (and this was in 1984!). In reality, it read muscle movements in your forehead. Needless to say, the only thing it was good for was giving the testers migraines.

Lotus Symphony
IBM's Lotus Symphony office suite was a kludge that the company finally made free. Released in July 1984 and a follow-up to Lotus 1-2-3, Symphony was an integrated software package for DOS that comprised a word processor, database, and presentation graphics applications. Compared to other word processors in its day, it was easy to use, but as opposed to other database programs—such as Ashton-Tate's dBase III and Borland Paradox 2.0—Symphony's FORM environment was weak.

7. OS/2 Version 1.1 Developed in 1987, OS/2 was the first operating system for the personal computer to provide multitasking based on hardware support. It ran in text mode and one program could be on the screen while other programs were running in the background. OS/2 was only available as a costly standalone package; Windows 3.0, however, was bundled with most computers. In addition, OS/2 lacked device drivers for printers and other computer hardware, couldn't map files, and had no cohesive command line. In the end, it just couldn't compete with Windows. Support for OS/2 was finally discontinued in December 2006.

Apple Mac Portable
Released in September 1989, the Apple Mac Portable was about as portable as a tree trunk! The black-and-white active-matrix LCD screen was also very hard to read in low-light situations. The Portable was discontinued in October of 1991.—Next: 1990s >