20 Feb
1998
20 Feb
'98
11:46 a.m.
I agree wholeheartedly with all you say with one exception. I have a
Pentium 75 overclocked to 100, 16MB ram. It runs Word 95 just fine,
and ran it fine when it had 8MB. Visual Basic and IE4 (I don't use
it regulary, Opera at www.operasoftware.com is much better: 1MB
download!)
work fine too. I can only imagine how Linux would run. But to put
this in a classical context, I agree that old computers are still
useful, but I so wish that they had better displays :)
Here's an interesting article from Byte magazine:
http://www.byte.com/art/9802/sec5/art1.htm
It talks about how computers are becoming obsolete the day you buy them
due to all the crazy new technologies being released into the market.
My
observation is that anyone who chases technology and is
always
upgrading
to the latest and greatest is always going to have an
"obsolete"
computer.
The situation is not as bad as the article makes it out
to be, not that
the article is actually saying the speed of new technology
introductions
is a problem. But if people could be satisfied with
what they have on
their desk, this issue of obsolescense would not be an issue at all.
In 1995 I bought a Pentium-90 system which I clocked up to 100Mhz. It
came with Windows 3.1 but I quickly upgraded to Win95. It originally
had
16MB RAM (which I've since upgraded to 32M) and a
1GB HD. It has a
5.25"
and 3.5" floppy and a CD-ROM drive. I'll
soon be adding another 540MB
HD
I have lying around spare, and then a 1.7GB SCSI HD as
soon as I find a
SCSI cable. It's slow by today's standard, but the damn thing works.
I
use an old version of Microsoft Works (3.0) for my word
processing and
spread sheeting; some people haven't even heard of Works! They only
know
Word. But Works loads instantly, whereas Word takes it
seems forever
to
load which is why I don't use it. Plus its bloated
and drags my system
down.
Which brings me to my point. The computers we collect are still so
damn
useful! And this is not a new argument, but even
though these old
machines don't have SVGA and EDO RAM and Ultra-SCSI and other
new-fangled
fanciness, they still work! They can still process
words, and crunch
numbers and hold information. And best of all, they play games MUCH
more
fun than the current cache of cathartic creations; DOOM
was novel when
I
first played it, but every other incantation after it
(DOOM II, QUAKE,
DUKE NUKEM, ETC) is the same game with a different "scenario" and
graphics, and that damn bobbing up and down makes me sick anyway!
Give me Choplifter, Rescue Raiders or Dino Eggs any day!
If you read the article carefully it gives a glimpse of the types of
machines that may be collectible in ten years or so. The article
proposes
the dawn of the age of the "disposable"
computer. This is totally
ridiculous. I cannot even relate to that mode of thinking. But on the
positive side, it means disgustingly cheap (and probably FREE)
computers
10, 5, even 1(!) year(s) from now. More cheap PCs for
us to run Linux
on!
(Imagine having your own DLA [Distributed Linux Array]
consisting of 16
or
more 300Mhz Pentium II PC, alls for just a song! You
could break
government encryption with something like that :)
People these days with their 333Mhz Pentiums with 128MB RAM and 4GB
harddrives should shut the hell up and be happy.
Long live "obsolete" computers.
Sam Alternate e-mail:
dastar(a)siconic.com
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