Mark W. Kaelin

Video games are a multi-million dollar business these days. But this booming industry owes much of its current success to a simple little console first sold in October 1977 called the Atari 2600 Video Computer System. By today’s standards, Atari games are not much to look at, but their simple game play is still addictive, especially when nostalgia for this dinosaur gaming console kicks in.

The Matrox TripleHead2Go Triple Digital Edition transforms you single-screen video signal into a video signal that can expand across three separate monitors. The nice thing about the TripleHead2Go is that it accomplishes this task in a small, light-weight package that does not require expensive additional video cards.

While the Osborne 1 claims to be the word’s first self-contained portable personal computer, the Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 4P can lay claim to being one of the next generation of portable computers. This TechRepublic Cracking Open Photo Gallery reveals how the TRS-80 Model 4P improved upon the initial luggable design to takes its place in the history of portable personal computers.

The Osborne 1 was the word’s first self-contained portable personal computer. We could not resist taking a look inside this piece of computing history in this TechRepublic Cracking Open Photo Gallery.

The Web browser war continues to rage in a sort of Cold War fashion and the latest salvo in the battle between Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox is IE8 beta. Take a look at this TechRepublic Photo Gallery to see what this newest version of Internet Explorer brings to the Web browser.

The Apple MacBook Air is thin, light, and a testament to what good engineering and design can accomplish in a notebook personal computer. This latest TechRepublic Cracking Open gallery explores the technology of this ultra thin notebook.

The Commodore 64 was extremely powerful in its day and we can still marvel at the beauty of its simple design in this TechRepublic Cracking Open.

In this TechRepublic teardown gallery, Mark Kaelin cracks open the HP Blackbird 002 DE LCi extreme gaming PC.

The Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer was one of the first personal computers to have wide acceptance. In this TechRepublic Cracking Open Gallery we take a look at what is inside this personal computer dinosaur.

For many of us in the baby-boom generation, the first computer we can remember having in our homes was the famous Commodore 64. In the early 1980s, this was a very successful home personal computer. It was the first computer I had that not only played games but also had word processing and a modem for downloading free and shareware applications. In many ways, the Commodore 64 was the pioneer of everything we take for granted in a personal computer world today. After soaking in some nostalgia, we plan to Crack Open this C64 to see what makes it tick.

Before Microsoft and Bill Gates took control of the personal computer market, personal computers such as the Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer (aka CoCo) were all the rage.

With an innovative design that was meant to grab your attention, the original clamshell iBook from Apple generated almost as much buzz in the IT world as the more recent iPhone. In 1999, personal computer users were generally stuck with the familiar black rectangle laptop, but the iBook only came in blueberry and orange and was shaped like a clamshell (toilet seat?). But what was the iBook like on the inside — we find out in this TechRepublic Cracking Open.