The 50 best products of all time

The Beatles. Citizen Kane. Muhammad Ali. Many have laid claim to being the "best ever" in their respective fields of work, but only one can be at the top of the list. And the same is true when it comes to technology.

So what's the best tech product to come out of the digital age? And what qualifies a product as "the best"? First, and foremost, it must be a quality product, a piece of hardware or software that has truly changed our lives and which we can't live without (or couldn't at the time). Beyond that, a product should have attained a certain level of popularity, had staying power, and in many cases, made some sort of breakthrough, influencing the development of later products of that ilk.

So after considering hundreds of products and engaging in many hours of painstaking debate, PC World presents the 50 Best Tech Products. Note that they’re only looking at technology to arise since the dawn of the computer, so don't expect transistor radios and the cotton gin on the list. Instead, you'll find gear that, in all likelihood, you used yourself at one point or another--and, in many cases, products you're still using today.

And oh yeah, you may think their choices are ridiculous or that they’ve left out much more important products. Have at them. Smack them down righteously via comments here or at the PC Word site.

1. Netscape Navigator (1994)
Marc Andreesen may have known what he was getting into when he co-wrote Mosaic at the National Center for Supercomputer Applications, but it wasn't until he graduated from college and met with some Valley types that the Web revolution really began. In 1994 Andreesen launched Netscape Communications, offering his new Navigator Web browser (based on Mosaic) to the world. Finally, users outside of the academic world got a taste of HTML, and nothing has been the same since.

Netscape was the reason people started spending hours a day on the Internet, leading to the boom (and bust) of many a Website. It was also the reason why Microsoft got sucked into antitrust litigation, when Internet Explorer was eventually embedded into Windows. And the company's August 9, 1995 IPO is universally considered to be the official start of the dot-com era.

Unfortunately, Netscape couldn't keep up with the times and was surpassed by Internet Explorer in the late '90s. Netscape still exists (under the ownership of AOL), but has fallen into utter disuse, though its influence can still be felt all over the Web. For instance, fragments of its original code live on in just about every browser still in production, from Mozilla Firefox to Internet Explorer. To reminisce about old versions of Netscape gone by, check out the Netscape Browser Archive.