History Lesson Part 2
Remember the era of 16 color monitors? No hard drives? 5 1/4" disks? Those were the days. And I don't mean that sarcastically. To a kid, it was great. Adults would always tell you that computers were made for more than just video games, but if you were a normal child, you promptly ignored this advice. It was 1986 and I was nine. The thing I remember most was how slow many of the more "graphics intensive" games like King Quest loaded from screen to screen. A borderline retarded neighor kid used to yell at the computer to go faster.
A couple of years later, my dad bought me my second computer. This was around the summer of 1992 and while it was an upgrade over my old machine, the man who picked it out for my dad chose a lemon. Remember, I wanted this for games. My dad wanted me to use it school stuff. [note - he never even touched the machine, so it was kind of pointless for him to decide how I'd use it] VGA was not supported. So I had few games to play. I had one I loved called Headline Harry. Great, great game. But it didn't make up for the rest of the games I couldn't play. Need I say this computer quickly became a 20lb paper weight? (That's the other thing, those machines were HUGE!)
Fast forward two years, to 1994, when I'm a senior in high school. My computer teacher was a Mac Addict (at the time when Macs were sometimes considered a joke among PC users) and the internet was starting to take off. It was obvious the old computer, and even older printer (by now an eight year old dot matrix) was not cutting it. I didn't even have a decent word processing program! Or so I said. My dad wasn't really keen on these things. But it was true the DOS word processer lacked the polish of later programs I'd use. The old machine didn't run Word, which was a blessing, actually.
This time, my Mac addict teacher helped my dad pick out the machine. And I was amazed. Sure, it had 8 megs of RAM and a 250 MB hardrive, but in 1994 terms, it was at or near the top of the line. And since I was able to access... well, not the internet, but a Mac run AOL equivelant called eWorld. A 9600 modem was considered "blazing fast" then. It was fun. I was only planning on staying my first month, then I'd cancel and join AOL, but I stayed until eWorld died in early 1996. By then it wasn't such a big deal, as I had access to the internet, through a local ISP, though I did lose contact with everybody I met previously.
Oh, the internet. This was in a time before spam was everywhere (of course spam is nearly as old as I am). Where most sites were text only. Netscape 1.1 was cutting edge technology, and Claris Email would go online, then off (if I so desired). The ability to read email offline, and save it in folders (these emails have sadly been lost) was such a boom over AOL that I immediately canceled that account. The irony is that while AOL charged you by the minute back then, my ISP was unlimited for the same price. But still, it was the appearance of connivence that gave me a major geek happy.
The Mac didn't last forever. After a while, even after a clean install, the machine started running so slow that I couldn't stand it anymore. I asked for a Windows machine for Christmas. My feeling for this machine was much like the Mac a few years earlier. And I stayed with Windows for another six years. Truth was, at one time Windows was the best OS for a user like myself. People who have only used Macs in the past few years would be surprised at how poor a machine they used to be. Sure, I loved it at the time, but nostalgia clouds your visions if you let it.
So, what caused me to stray from the fold? Well, it wasn't just one thing. Anybody who remembers Windows ME knows it was the worst commercially written OS ever. Those who thought Win95 and 98 were steaming piles [at the time I liked both] hadn't seen anything yet. I had a new machine, my third Windows box by now, and the only thing that kept me from using 98 still was that my dial-up modem [remember those?] wouldn't work with 98 due to some sort of conflict that only ME addressed.
I suffered with this OS for about a year or so. By the summer of 2002 I wanted something new, but Linux was still something only the geekiest of geeks could manage. That, and I was less than impressed with my trial run of Mandrake the previous Fall. It was good until everything went south. Well, the bad thing was that everything went south on the Windows partition at about the same time.
I hated my luck. I had a still new machine, only over a year old, and I felt stuck. With the activation "feature" I refused to upgrade to XP, so I did what I never thought I'd do again. I bought a Mac.
Mac OS X was still pretty new in 2002, but I had no trouble finding programs for all my needs (except for IRC. For some reason a good IRC client [xchat or colloquy] was still years away). I felt vindicated that I had a machine that wouldn't crash. Also a few weeks later, my cable company finally offered broadband internet access. I don't think I have to tell you how I put this to work.
In March 2006, I upgraded to a Mactel Mini. I was amazed the eMac continued to give good service, but I wanted something a bit peppier. I sometimes think about dusting off the old machine and using it for a server, but it doesn't have a wireless card in it. Yet.
The fate of my Dell machine isn't so sad. I've recently discovered Ubuntu linux, and now use that machine quite often. Nowhere near as much as my Mactel, but at least the Dell box is running better now than it ever has. Ubuntu will be the linux distro of the future. Once people try it out (so as long as they don't try OS X first), I believe Linux will be a viable alternative to Windows.
The greatest irony of all? Whereas I used my 1st couple of computers for nothing by games, I rarely play games at all on them now. (The exception is Super Tux on Ubuntu.) But that's why I bought an Xbox 360, innit?
I have released my text works under a Creative Commons Licence.