Breach in subject

I know this may be a little off topic, but... (How many times have we read this?!?) I am suprised at the number of wisened elders in my presence, People that actually used the machines I dreamed about using in my teenaged years. I was glad to find out all of these old systems that I wanted so bad back then actually sport price tags today that I can afford. I have recently sold off the large majority of my collection of late 80's computers (my wife calls it the pile, collectively), but have learned that the real joy in using these systems is the memories it gives me, something about each individual system that stands out to me. I also find that using computers from another era tends to bring me back down to earth. Most people today think these machines are a bunch of hulking dinosnores that can't be useful except as boat anchors in todays PC world. I know otherwise. Up until recently I had been using a Model 100 for taking notes and doing addresses, etc. Just as good at text entry as any P****** system is today. My boss still scoffs at me for toting around my venerable GRiDCASE 3 (running windows 1.x) that has seen regular use since I got it, or running Windows 3 on the old Zenith Supersport, the topic of a quite active thread for the past day or so in this very list. Hey, I'm not rich. If I was, I'd buy the fastest notebook/desktop system around. But alas, I am not. The boss stops scoffing when I tell him how much I paid for my computers and show him what they can still run. :) Well, that's it for the monologue. I'm sitting here listening to an instrumental christmas cd, waiting for IE 4.01 to download, and contemplating what will be considered old news 10 years from now. BTW, I didn't mean anything with the "wisened elder" comment. I consider myself an oldtimer at the young age of 27, with all these little high school know-it-alls that memorize man pages and can recite every IP address and who it belongs to on their ISP. I can remember the days before GUI. I was there. Couldn't afford more than a C-64 or CoCo back then, but I remember them as some of the best days in computer history. A parting question: I'm not exactly sure if the HP 7450a 2-pen plotter falls within the 10-year limit but... Does anyone know where I can get new pens for this unit? - John Higginbotham - limbo.netpath.net