graeme_p - 5:16 pm on Aug 8, 2007 (gmt 0)

The real kudos need to go to Gary Kildall of Digital Research that created CP/M which was the basis of MS-DOS as Bill Gates purchased a 16-bit clone of CP/M to resell to IBM.

True for DOS style OSes, but there were lots of other ingredients in the PC mix. A few more who deserve credit:

1) Visicalc for giving businesses a compelling reason to buy PCs (or micro-computers as they were called then).
2) Apple and other early manufacturers. Many are forgotten names (MITS Altair, Sinclair, Commodore ....).
3) Intel and other microprocessor manufacturers.

Incidentally, the first few versions of Windows were really bad. I remember using Windows 2 in my first paid work (a holiday job). It was far less usable, on much more expensive hardware, than the Atari ST I had at home. The best thing to do with Windows 2 was ignore it and use DOS.