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So what's this new-fangled internet thing?

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  • benenglish

    Just Another Boomer
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    Nov 22, 2011
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    $5 per hour connection charge, 2 hours to download the newspaper.

    Wow. Early adopters really do pay high prices, don't they? ;)
     

    txinvestigator

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    I remember when I first heard of online communities, streaming content for television, and inter-connectivity between phones, computers, etc., I thought it would not be in this generation.

    Science Fiction is real.
     

    GlockOwner

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    I'm young, so I remember seeing an iPod for the first time. It was my first day of community college right after high school. 2004. A friend of mine had his headphones attached to it....told me it was an "ipod"....didn't like it....lol.

    If only I had bought a bunch of apple stock back then.....
     

    Gilgondorin

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    I grew up right during the on-set of mass consumer computing. You wouldn't believe how far we've come from back then.

    Today you can buy a single-function calculator at a dollar store for $.99 and you'd still have more computing power in your hand than was present in the Apollo 13 Rocket that sent Neil Armstrong to the moon. The first printer took 13 minutes to print a one-sided document, and when the 1 GB hard drive first came out, people didn't know what to do with so much storage; the typical "home use" computer back in the 1980's cost $5,000, felt like it weighed a ton, and you had to pay to be trained to use it at $100+ per hour in some cases, not counting the self-review you did using user manuals the size of a dictionary.

    We a lot about the way the "old days" used to be in Computer Science class. And to think: Right now we think quantum computing is a load of hooey. 20 years from now, we won't know how on Earth we existed without it.
     

    mitchntx

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    My first computer was a TI99 and I quickly upgraded to a VIC-20 so I could save 1K of work on a cassette tape drive.
    Once I snagged a Commodore 64, the VIC20 was converted to interpret morse code for my local ham radio club.

    I think I just came out of the nerd-closet.
     

    vmax

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    We got Macintosh's when I was in high school in 84 or 85

    I remember they were huge and they just sat there for a few weeks, we were all afraid to mess with them.
     

    benenglish

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    Today you can buy a single-function calculator at a dollar store for $.99 ...
    At one time, those were a big status symbol. When I was in high school, the mid 1970s, a kid had one. IIRC, it cost about $350 or so. We're talking add, subtract, multiply, divide...and that's it. They had already started coming down in price and I'm old enough to have been in school when the best calc ever (Yes, I'm trying to start an argument.;)) came on the market - the TI 30.
     

    txinvestigator

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    In High School during my senior year (1979) I took a class called Computer Math. The computer was a terminal that looked like a HUGE typewriter. It wasn't until about 1986 that I purchased a Commadore 64. It had 64k of RAM and no hard drive, and one 5 1/4 inch disk drive. It BASIC language, I still remember usig the word processor, insert program disc, type the word "load" and then the program name. To save a document you would remove the program disk and insert a "data" disk, then save it. No modem, because there was nothing to really connect to for a normal person.

    I don't recall what happened to it, but my next real computer was a hand me down from my dad's business, and IBM clone with DOS something or another.

    MS didn't rule then (1995ish) like they do today, and I preferred Lotus to MS for most products, which was IBM.

    I think there were three major OS back then, someone correct me if I am wrong; MS, Apple and IBM OS/2?

    I first connected to the internet in 1997 with a Compaq running Windows 95.
     
    Last edited:

    mitchntx

    Sarcasm Sensei
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    Jan 15, 2012
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    Almost start a war? I'd be interested to hear that story.

    war-games1.jpg
     

    robertc1024

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    Jan 22, 2013
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    At one time, those were a big status symbol. When I was in high school, the mid 1970s, a kid had one. IIRC, it cost about $350 or so. We're talking add, subtract, multiply, divide...and that's it. They had already started coming down in price and I'm old enough to have been in school when the best calc ever (Yes, I'm trying to start an argument.;)) came on the market - the TI 30.

    HP21 All the way! Love those old Reverse Polish Notation calculators. First calculator I had in high school was a K+E log log decitrig slide rule. In 1976, in my computer programming class we had a 300 baud modem you had to stick the phone receiver in to hook up to a computer at UT.
     
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