18 May
2009
18 May
'09
8:54 p.m.
On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 4:34 PM, Mark Tapley <mtapley at swri.edu> wrote:
Hello all,
? ? ? ?FYI&D, an article on MSN tech & gadgets describing "25 Computer
products that refused to die".
http://tech.msn.com/howto/articlepcw.aspx?cp-documentid=19017036&page=1
Nice.
The list is:
.
.
.
Floppy Disks
This section asks the question "Under what circumstances would you opt
for floppies over something like a $10 (or so) 4GB USB drive that
holds 2750 times as much data?"
Well... I would when I'm on a machine that doesn't _have_ USB and
can't have it equipped (like my Dell Latitude LM that only has PCMCIA,
not Cardbus... it's been running RedHat 9 since it was given to me in
2003. With 256MB of RAM and a 40GB disk, it's not a terrible laptop,
but I wouldn't try to run a recent browser on it, that's for sure).
.
.
.
Compuserve
This section mentions "Wow" and calls it "a faux-AOL that the company
shuttered within months of its 1996 release -- I can?t believe that
anyone misses it or is looking for it.". I never used Wow, but when I
was working at AOL/CompuServe in 2001, I worked directly with some
folks who were part of the Wow launch a few years earlier. Their
comments were, um, uncharitable. Apparently few people liked it,
inside the company or out. I still have a couple of Wow mousepads,
the only useful remnant.
The article also says "For those of us who were CompuServe users back
when its user IDs consisted of lots of digits and a mysterious comma,
it?s a depressing fate." I haven't memorized my old PPN, but I do
have it in easy reach at home on the subscriber label of ancient
copies of "Online" magazine.
I'm glad I worked there (twice!), but it was sad to watch the
once-great CompuServe in the final stages of digestion by AOL.
-ethan