International PC Owners

Founded in 1981 closed in 1983
Status: nomoregames
Country: USA

12.3

per year

aka(s): IPCO,IBM Personal Computer Owners Group

IPCO was a user group for IBM PC owners, operating out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and later Poland, Ohio, USA. The founders were two engineers and their wives, Jim and Cindy Cookinham and Steve and Windy Hart.

The group's selection of software - which covered business, science, graphics, education, utilities and games - was put together from user contributions. For an annual membership due ($15 within the US, $20 for Canada and $45 worldwide, as of 1982), IPCO members were eligible to participate in the group's software exchange: submit a program to the IPCO catalog, and receive a diskette with 4 free programs of your choice. The catalog included 80 programs as of early 1983, and over 175 by July that same year; by mid-1984 the count had grown to over 300 programs (selling for $3 per program or $6 per disk), plus 20 compilation disks ($15 each).

Other productions included the bimonthly "IPCO Info" newsletter, with information on PC hardware/software (including the emerging shareware/public domain arena), reader requests, tips, comments, and even gossip culled from BBS messages.