Having several different competing, and incompatible, formats in a consumer electronics industry is not a natural state of affairs. Most industries invariably start this way, but pretty soon a 'standard' is established. Only after this standard is accepted as The One does the mass market consumer - which is where all the real money is made - join the party, when the fear of purchasing what could be an obsolete format is removed.

Take, for instance, the hi-fi. Imagine you were looking to buy a system and your local retailer presented you with a series of confusing options: this one will play Blur and 5ive, this one is fine for Oasis, this one only plays rap CDs... clearly, it couldn't happen. Due to the technology-led nature of the business, however, that's exactly the situation that confronted the home computer buyer of just 10 years ago. If he wanted to buy a system he could choose from a Sinclair Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, Commodore Amiga, Atari ST, Apple Macintosh, Acorn Archimedes, Amstrad PCW - and these were just the mainstream models. If his tastes were a little more eccentric there were also formats such as the Tatung Einstein and MGT Sam Coupe, all of which were totally incompatible with each other's software and, to a certain degree, peripherals and add-ons.

Yes, the success of competing and incompatible games consoles laughs in the face of this theory, but consoles are different. Everyone, especially the purchaser, knows they only have a limited lifespan, so we'll sidestep that exception and move on...

There was one other format the computer buyer of 10 years ago could choose, and in some ways this was the least satisfying of all. It was by far the most expensive, unfriendly and confusing to use, it lacked the sound and graphic capabilities of its rivals, which meant its software was technically inferior, yet considerably more expensive, and with its lack of a Graphic User Interface it was probably the most unsuitable for a home user. It was, of course, the PC.