In the beginning, the computer lived in a basement, in a place once called "the DP facility". It was an ordered environment where gentlemen (mostly) in white lab coats, white polyester shirts, lace-thin black ties and black rim glasses kept everything running smoothly. There were few, if any, users outside the realm of the DP facility. Life was good and comfortable for all. Accountants sent punch cards through a messenger to the DP facility and a few days later they received the printouts of their calculations. For non-IT people, the emergence of the computer was still a matter of sending and receiving pieces of paper.

Then at some point the terminal arrived. These were green or amber screens connected to a serial port and a keyboard that allowed anyone within a certain distance of the DP facility access to the company's mainframe. They were the tentacles of the computer reaching beyond its basement enclosure and onto users' desks.

The emergence of the terminal lead to the introduction of the non-IT user and people from all walks of life were finally able to use computers. But, in the end, there was still only one computer and those same IT people in white lab coats were now charged with user-support chores and the daily routine changed very little: keep the mainframe and its applications running smoothly.

Then during the 1970s some hippies on acid (those were the days!) had this vision that currently available "off-the-shelf" parts could be used to put together something that would resemble a computer. It wouldn't go beyond printing numeric symbols on a red LED display and running very simple programs, but the seed of the personal computer was planted within the same circle of hobbyists who would eventually turn their vision into our reality.

The personal computer was born as a toy for IT people and not as a serious tool for any one else. But soon after its rise came the spreadsheet, embodied back then as VisiCalc, and that would change the world forever. The computer could finally sit on every accountant's desktop and, more important, enable "beancounters" to work freely without having to spend nights at the office in front of the company's mainframe terminal and without having to spend a fortune on a remote terminal and phone line (an expensive commodity back then that slowed the adoption of modems). Freedom from the mainframe or the office's minicomputer was a major force that fueled the emergence of the PC.

In its dawn, the PC was basically a detached terminal. Its usability, look and feel were the same as those of a mainframe or minicomputer terminal. Even the screen colors of PC monitors of the day matched those available for terminals. Consequently, the neolithic PC appealed mostly to those people who were already using computers in business and in large organizations. The general public had little to benefit from the PC revolution in its early days. The simplicity of the PC, often dedicated to running one or two programs from a tape or a floppy drive, made it a viable technology to own but mostly for those with experience in using a terminal because it required no more work or knowledge from the user than the terminal had.

Then came 1984 and, again, the world would never be the same. The GUI arrived to much fanfare and few applications. Finally, anyone, almost without any previous training, could intuitively use a computer. It didn't take long for the killer application of this new paradigm of visual computing to emerge: DTP.

The computer finally left the realm of number crunchers and entered the fringes of places where computers hadn't ever been used before. The newspaper and magazine editing rooms and the professionals who worked there would see their lives and work transformed dramatically by the PC; not only because it made life somewhat easier for reporters, editors and designers working together, but also because hard disks, the multiple programs needed for DTP and the possibilities of failure that came with all this brought new problems and challenges that these users had never previously considered. Imagine that first night when a hard disk failed in an editing room just minutes before sending the files to the pre-press room, and how the people in that room saw the dark side of PC computing, one with which we're all too familiar today.

The fact that these first GUI computers were made by the same vendor that provided the hardware and the OS made them expensive, and because there wasn't a huge market for the applications that supported DTP, the software packages were also expensive and no one but professionals were expected to pay for them. The computer had become easy to use but it still was hard for everyone to own one.

At the beginning of the 1990s the same vendor that had liberated the PC model from a hardware-software lock-in came up with the first GUI OS that would work on every hardware. Machine prices were already falling precipitously back then and thus it became viable to start arming not just accountants and top executives with a PC but now even a student and a receptionist could have a computer on their desks.

As a result office productivity exploded.

The same secretary who just five years before was barely able to write five memos and keep an office expense sheet was now capable of carrying all the work of the department and even steal some time to play solitaire every once in a while. Executives could write their own memos and keep their own contacts directories, and even synchronize their data with that of other people in their department.

For their part, mainframes were relegated to specialized tasks in very large organizations and the minicomputer all but disappeared. But the work of IT departments in these large organizations also changed radically. From their ivory tower positions as experts, IT staff status now diminished to perhaps just a notch above a custodial level. Their main task became, in many cases, to go from cubicle to cubicle fixing problems, installing software, reinstalling it, maintaining users' PCs and tending to their needs. Keeping the mainframe running became just a minimal portion of the whole IT department workload.

And, in every home around the world computers started appearing. First as a curiosity to brag to the neighbors and then as an essential tool that allowed work, homework and even some house work to be performed more effectively.

By the time the Internet came in the mid-90s, computers were already a blessing as much as a curse for most users. By then many users had already experienced the problems caused by crashed hard disks, corrupted files, accidental deletions and other nightmares that have accompanied the PC since it entered our lives. For most users, maintaining the computer in optimal shape was something for which they had no knowledge and no intention of acquiring it. And the Internet would bring malware, viruses, spam and other problems on top of those that existed before it.

Today, the computer has certainly become more usable and more useful than ever but it has also become a large source of problems for its users. The more people depend on computers for their every day tasks the more important it becomes that they keep their computer's OS fully patched, their software applications up to their latests versions, their firewalls on and their antivirus software on and up-to-date.

PC users must follow strict backup routines, defrag their hard disks frequently and on top of that they must be careful of the email they receive, the IM messages they get and the Web pages that they surf. And even if one stays paranoically alert and follows every rule of today's PC computing best practices, the age-old problems of the PC (hard disk failure, accidental deletions, total computer fry-ups, etc.) can come and haunt you and turn any night into Halloween.

Anyone who has used the same computer for the last couple of years can testify to how that [once] beautiful piece of hardware that used to have a quick startup time with applications that opened right after one double-clicked the icon, has now become a dirty hog that takes several minutes to start each morning and where some applications refuse to launch and where other software that was never installed runs reliably every time, even without your knowledge.

All this has happened even after many users have spent countless hours sitting in front of a machine that's been poorly utilized because it's performing some obscure task that has no apparent or immediate benefit to the user. Our time is being consumed uselessly by computers and we are unable to choose any alternative. In the worst cases, computers have caused many lost work-hours for their owners because of a virus or other problem that simply ate the user's work. Yes, computers these days can get us into lose-lose situations, the pinnacle of inefficiency and stupidity. Neither program maker nor user benefits from bugs yet they are a pervasive feature of software today. And for that reason the current desktop model must change.

One night at 3:00 am after I had spent my whole Sunday trying to backup a hard disk that had some damaged sectors (which I discovered by coincidence after my PC had caught a virus and I was trying to repair it), I had an epiphany: Why don't we keep the GUI and send all the rest back to the mainframe? Where are those gentlemen in white lab coats now that I need them desperately to take care of my computer?

According to the Sapotek vision, the PC was a transitional model that allowed for the emergence of the desktop metaphor and the GUI. But, now that a professionally-maintained grid and a permanent broadband connection are available to provide you with a desktop as a service, and eliminate all those dreaded computer perils and chores from your life, the reason for the existence of the PC will eventually disappear, or so we believe.