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The "Athens" PC was a prototype personal computer developed between 2002 and 2004 by Hewlett-Packard in collaboration with the Microsoft Corporation for the Microsoft Windows "Longhorn" operating system.
So for example, I know I could pick up a handset and make a phone call in the normal way, but with the PC in the equation, I can use voice dialing or I can select a contact directly from the list. But our broader goal is to work with a wide variety of telephony devices and telephone services, whether it's the analog phone that I've had in my basement for three years, or an enterprise PBX system like this handset from EAS telecom, or a Bluetooth solution like this off-the-shelf Sony Ericsson phone, this prototype Bluetooth smart phone, or this prototype PC, Pocket PC phone edition from Texas Instruments, that not only integrates Bluetooth but Wi-Fi as well.
— Chad Magendanz, Chad Magendanz demos Athens at WinHEC 2003, [5]
The ability to automatically adjust the volume of other applications when using a PC to place or receive telephone calls, an "Athens" PC feature that Magendanz demoed in WinHEC 2003,[5] was introduced in Windows 7.[16]
Telecommunications applications (see list at Wikipedia) have also allowed users to make voice and video calls from PCs without using a phone.
The Your Phone app in Windows 10 allows a user to make and receive calls from an Android device through a Bluetooth connection,[17] partially fulfilling a broader goal for the "Athens" PC of a Bluetooth solution for a phone-PC connection that Magendanz described on his WinHEC 2003 demo.[5]
Finally, a video that shows how the Athens PC dream used to be the stuff of fiction, and what has since happened:
These ideas are pretty ahead of it's time, even though the realization took so long to accomplish.
And in the case of the Athens PC, some features have yet to be accomplished. An example would be connecting a regular phone (landline, not mobile) to a PC.
