The generic term for an x86 box with a BIOS roughly compatible with the original 1981 Personal Computer from IBM. These days they have been modernized but still use practically the same technology from the 1970s as they pay the price for backward compatibility. They typically run Windows. Mac users like to think that PC == Windows box. They are wrong.

PCs really suck, but the alternatives are either too expensive or held in tight proprietary hardware monopoly (example: pa-risc, ppc, alpha, sparc, mips)