More old stuff incoming

Liam Proven lproven at gmail.com
Wed Dec 19 06:14:59 CST 2018


On Wed, 19 Dec 2018 at 12:51, Peter Corlett via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
> Realistically, computers made before around 2010 *are* antiques: something
> where the main value is due to its age rather than its utility.

Mostly, yup.

When my laptop gave me some problems, start of 2017, I fired up my old
~3GHz Core 2 Extreme box, my one-time Hackintosh, maxed out with 8GB
of RAM and a quick-ish 1TB hard disk.

I installed Win10 and got it fully updated.

It took 25min to open the Word document I was working on.

Nearly half an hour. OK, yes, a nearly 1GB Word doc, but *still*.

So I bought a newer laptop, a used Thinkpad X220, for £150. It opened
the doc in about 3min.

There has been quite a lot of progress, and even a high-end decade-old
PC is very low-end now, whatever the specs suggest.

OTOH, it does have a floppy drive, which is why I keep it around.

> The lack of intimate knowledge of machines from before one was born is not
> surprising. You only learn it to that depth if it was current kit in your
> youth. So us GenXers know rather more about 1980s Sinclair and Acorn machines
> than is healthy, and earlier kit is a orange-and-wood-grain mystery.

Absolutely. No disagreement there at all.

But because the kit is mysterious to them, they're willing to spend
money to get it and explore it.

Same as people are now actively seeking late-era fast 486s and early
Pentium-era boxes, for Win9x gaming. A lot of games didn't make the
transition to the NT-based Windows era, and for them, period kit is
the best way to play them.

I personally think it's barking but then I am not much of a gamer.

> Are you feeling old yet?

Nah, I'm used to it.
--
Liam Proven - Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
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