Getting sentimental over hardware?
That Macintosh SE, my first computer, sits on a shelf next to my father's first
typewriter. There's no doubt that in a very real
way I became attached to it. But that's not the case with the PowerMac 6100/60
that replaced it. Yes, I've still got that computer in the house, very much to
Tzippi's dismay, but I hold on to it more because I still hope some day to salvage
some of the files on that machine, than because of any particular feelings of
attachment that I might feel toward it. And though I may at some point discover
that I'm terribly wrong, I'm quite sure that were I to try and sell it - on,
say, eBay, I'd discover that it's not worth anything.
That Macintosh had 24MB of RAM - again, for its time actually quite fast, and
almost unimaginably slow today. I thought then that the half GB of hard disk space
that it came with was astronomical, even after I partitioned it into three quarters
for the Mac and one quarter for the 486 processor installed on it, that for a
limited amount of time allowed me to enjoy a Macintosh yet still function in the
almost totally non-Mac world of educational computing in Israel. That computer
didn't really last me very long, though not because it wasn't powerful enough
(which it wasn't) but simply because it ultimately became obvious that as much
as I liked working with a Macintosh, in my realm of work in Israel it was more
trouble than it was worth.
My first non Macintosh computer is no longer with us, though the person who sold
me my present machine promised to try and fix it and return it to me - longer
ago than I can actually remember. It had 64MB of RAM which was considered better
than sufficient back then, though by the time I got it, second hand, it already
suffered from being outdated. We didn't call them
Pentium 1's back then, basically because Pentium 2's were still rather new on
the market. With a processing speed of 166 it was considered relatively swift.
Upon buying it I upgraded to an 8GB hard drive which, of course, seemed then to
be a capacity well beyond anything I might ever need.
Go to: Me and Moore's Law.