PC World editors

From a guy renting his chest for advertising to the Turkish man who may have inspired Ali G's creator, these websites have a lot to answer for.

In honour of the raging gizmo infatuation, we polled our editors and asked them to name the top 50 gadgets of the last 50 years. We rated each gadget on its usefulness, design, degree of innovation and influence on subsequent gadgets, as well as the ineffable quality we called the "cool factor".

IBM's first PC, announced on August 12, 1981, was far from the first personal computer-but, when it arrived, there was near-universal agreement that it was likely to be a landmark machine. It was. And 25 years later, it still ranks among the most significant computers ever. We decided to celebrate the IBM PC's 25th birthday by identifying the 25 PCs that have mattered most--from any manufacturer, and from any era.

PC World's list of the top 25 PCs of all time was assembled after we polled our editors for nominations. We then rated the nominated gadgets for innovation, impact, industrial design and intangibles. Here are the results.

Greatest PCs: 25-23

Greatest PCs: 22-20

Greatest PCs: 16-14

Greatest PCs: 13-11