It is hard for many to accept that a quarter of a century - a huge length of time in IT terms - has passed since the first PC was launched. The world's first PC weighed a hefty 25 pounds and stood just under six inches high, but on 12 August 1981, the IBM Personal Computer arrived on the world stage.

The Lenovo of today, formed by the merger between the Lenovo Group and IBM's personal computing division, has more than 2 000 patents, several 'industry firsts', over 1 700 engineers entirely dedicated to research and development across three innovation centres in Japan, China and the US.

For most 25 year-olds, the growth spurt years are behind them as they begin to reach (and in some cases surpass) their peak. However, the 'twenty-something' PC is far from slowing down. Lenovo believes that the PC as we know it today is a continuously-evolving machine that eats technology innovations and is ever hungry for more.

The PC has become a springboard for business users, dictating the future of collaboration and communication and a faster, more integrated, efficient, collaborative and seamless working environment for its users.

"The next 25 years of the Lenovo PC will have many surprises in store for us and our customers, says Rashid Wally, country GM, Lenovo SA. "Nowadays, thanks to wireless networking, ubiquitous computing is a fact; security in notebooks is foremost with digital fingerprints, and form-factors are becoming smaller by the day. The PC we see today is one that will truly help the world come closer together.