Next month will mark 25 years since I started using a home computer. Brad Feld and I were talking about this in my office a few weeks ago and I have been meaning to write this post since. Twenty-five years is a long time! So I thought it might be fun this summer, being geeks and all, if we wrote about "all the computers we have loved before." Here's my run at the highlights, to the best of my recollection. Share yours with the tag: myfirstcomputer. Oh and skip to the end for a peek at the future if this doesn't interest you ...
1982: Atari 800
Ahh the summer of 1982. I was 12 years old and a video game junkie. The Go-Gos dominated the radio. Even today if I hear Pac Man music or "Head Over Heels" I start to jiggle my pocket for quarters.
I had used a Radio Shack TRS 80 (often called the Trash 80) at sleep away camp in 1981 and loved it. From then on I was dying to have my own computer. My parents bought me the Atari for my Bar Mitzvah. We upgraded it to 64K of RAM (yes, I said K) and added a cassette tape drive and a dot-matrix printer. I connected it to the Sony Trinitron TV in my room.
The Atari 800 was a good computer. My Dad, an engineer, and I made it do all kinds of cool stuff. For example, we programed in Basic to plot out ones and zeros on a dot matrix paper to to draw pictures of Snoopy. I subscribed to Compute! magazine and Antic. The magazine came with pages of code that you would input by hand. The result: usually a fun snake game or something like that. (I know I know. You probably think I lived in a Log Cabin too.)
1985: Atari 800 XL
This was basically the family upgrade to the Atari 800. I used a word processor called AtariWriter to write school reports. This is what it looked like...
More importantly, this was also the first computer I used to get online with a 300 baud modem.
I first subscribed to an Atari online service called Plato that was really cool, but it went bust. Then I logged on to Compuserve and GEnie, a service that General Electric ran. I hung out in the chat rooms and forums. It was all text based but really cool and fun. It was like digg with its knuckles on the ground.
Later on I signed up for a USA Today online service that was for sports junkies. We ran up huge bills on all of these because it was all charged by the hour back then. The 'rents were not too pleased at the time but clearly it was all worth it.
Last but not least, during the mid-1980s I set up a BBS - what was then called bulletin boards. You dialed into a phone number via your modem that you found on other BBSes. Each one was a private network with content. I ran one about sports but shut it down when we started getting calls in the middle of the night.
1986-1991: The Computerless Dark Ages
From 1986 to basically 1991 or so I didn't actually get a new computer. I largely used the ones I had access to in school. They were all Apple computers.
In high school I used an Apple IIe, Apple III. I took a class in computer graphics and used the Apple III to draw and saw that the computer could be a creative tool too.
In college I used Macs. By then Macs were starting to gain steam. My friend in high school had a Mac Classic and I was jealous but it was too expensive for me to buy at the time. However, in college I used a Mac SE and Microsoft Word extensively for word processing. I really didn't spend as much time online as I did in high school but still used GEnie a fair amount.
More importantly, I got my first taste of desktop publishing in 1990. We used Macs to design and layout the school newspaper, which I was a contributor to. I was fascinated with Pagemaker and what it could do.
1992: Apple Macintosh LC
After I graduated I wanted to get a Mac so I saved up everything I could muster and purchased a Macintosh LC, PageMaker, Photoshop and Illustrator. I taught myself these programs inside and out and later Quark as well.
This computer was perhaps the one that was most important because it's the one I used when I fell in love with the Internet. In 1992 I reconnected online by signing up for America Online. I will never forget the feeling of dialing in and seeing everything I could discover online. Back then AOL was a closed service - a walled garden. However, it had a wealth of content.
1993: Apple PowerBook 145B
My Dad had an IBM luggable computer in the late 1980s and I saw that portable computing was going to be a big deal one day. It was really unaffordable at the time. However, by 1991 or so with the introduction of the ThinkPads and Powerbooks, they were becoming within reach.
In 1993 I bought the most affordable PowerBook - the 145B. It had a black and white screen but it was great for writing, which I was doing a lot of at the time. I began in fact to freelance for MacUser (then a US magazine) and Mac Home Journal. I also attended my first Macworld conference. I used a 44mb Syquest Drive for back up and to shuttle files back and forth.
1995-2002: Dell Dimension (several models)
By 1995 the Microsoft marketing machine was in full motion. You knew Windows 95 was going to be a big deal. I switched from the Mac to the PC as my main computer. I was also not doing as much graphic design and more research/writing and PR so it was time to go corporate.
In 1995 I was still an AOL member but by then they had truly began to embrace the Web. In 1994 I began to explore Archie and Gopher. By 1995 I was using Mosaic then Netscape, but connecting through AOL and later an ISP. Finally, like everyone, I started to use Internet Explorer. My Dell Dimension was the computer I first used to explore the Net. I also joined MSN and liked it a lot too.
Later on, I upgraded to a new Dell every few years. Each time, I purchased more power. Finally in 1999 I added a broadband connection and began to use the computer a lot more.
1996-2003: Various Laptops from Dell, Toshiba and IBM
Separately, I also had a computer at work that I took home. I have worked on a laptop since 1996. These included IBM Thinkpads, a Toshiba Tecra and various Dell Inspirons. I also briefly used an Apple Powerbook (the Wallstreet Model) during the dot-com boom when I worked at a small agency. To some degree, I used these more than I did my desktop, especially as I added wifi in 2001. During this time I ran Windows 95, 98, ME and eventually XP.
2004: Apple PowerBook G4
By 2004 I was ready to ditch the desktop. I really liked working off the smaller screen. Also, my job really became a lot more mobile as I began to travel the country speaking and consulting. I bought an Apple PowerBook G4. This was the computer I started this blog on. It was also the machine I used to podcast and experiment with lots of other sites. I also started to take this computer to work in my last job. It ran double duty.
Switching over to the Mac had pros/cons. I loved the Mac OS X interface, but I missed many windows apps. Also, I found that many sites would not work with Safari or Firefox and longed for a way to experience the best of both worlds.
2006 - Today: Apple MacBook (Black edition, version 1)
Finally, in 2006, everything came together in just the way I wanted it. I bought the first generation Macbook. This is the computer I use today at home and on the road (more on that part in a bit). It's perfect because I am able to run both Mac OS X Tiger and Windows Vista. I was running them both under Bootcamp but have switched to Parallels so that I can operate both at the same time.
More importantly, these days much of what I need is accessible from any computer because it's in the cloud. Work files are all on servers accessible from anywhere. Personal files too are backed up to the web and are available. This is a big trend that will extend out to mobile phones too. For a peek, take a look at Soonr.
The Future
What will my computing experience look like in the next 25 years? The devices I use today will look even more quaint than an Atari 800 does today. I don't have the answers. None of us do. But directionally you can see where it is going.
The gap between cell phones and laptops will narrow dramatically in the next several years. The iPhone and Palm's Foleo are two notable examples. (Palm is a client.) Windows Mobile too will power many of these devices, as will Web services. Take a look at iZoho for example.
This week I took my first overnight business trip in 10 years without a laptop. All I took was my iPhone and a travel router. It worked perfectly, though it was only one night. Still, it's a big deal that I was able to do this. Other execs I know only travel with their Blackberries.
Soon, all of these devices will connect to peripherals - flash-based storage, keyboards, full-sized monitors, mice. And they will do so seamlessly and wirelessly. In five years very few of us will be lugging around laptops. The cell phone will be our computer, both at home and in the office.
In addition, more of our data will live not on hard drives but "in the cloud." They will be accessible from everywhere, particularly as high speed broadband becomes more ubiquitous.
When I was out in the Valley a few weeks ago Intel indicated that they see no end for Moore's Law. That's good news and clearly if this post is around in five years it will be interesting to see just how much more we can do with technology. I intend to be around for the ride.
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