Ride the PLC vs. PC Time Machine

As part of our year-long 15th anniversary celebration, we're reprising a PLC vs. PC article exactly as we first published it in February of 2001. If you've been using controllers during this period, you'll be reminded how the whole "PC-based control will/will not take over the machine control world and turn PLCs into relics" debate was evolving. As usual, we quoted a lot of automation supplier companies in the article. You'll see how many of those companies no longer exist as standalone entities. Here's a little snippet: "If response speed becomes a problem, PC-based controls can simply upgrade processors, while PC users have to upgrade to an entirely differnet model. If you can't reach a millisecond cycle time with a 33 MHz 386 processor, just use a faster Pentium II from the same supplier...."

I'll be curious what you think about this little story, the subject of which is still timely, some 11 years after it first appeared.

We'll also be posting the results of the 2012 Readers' Choice Awards any day now, so be on the lookout for them, too.