New Computer

[WM75Guy]

My first computer was bought in 1984, a Tandy 1000 with dual 5 1/4" disk drives and a 10 MB hard card. My brother-in-law at the time worked for Tandy Corp headquarters in Fort Worth in the computer engineering department so I was able to get one of the first ones produced. My favorite phone was the 3-watt Motorola Tough Talker, even though it was a tad heavy. Had the car kit so I could put it in the back of my Blazer connected to power and an outside antenna. Had an extension for the handset, which moved it to a mount on the front console.

 

[JasperFrank]

The SX-64 was a fantastic machine for its time. Used one for a few years doing software conventions in the Mid to Late 80's. I just loved the way it could have an external monitor, so I at the booth, could have a Demo at the front using a monitor and could see what they were seeing from the desk facing monitor at the same time. Nothing special now, but then, it was an effort saver. And not very complicated to set up after a long flight, in a strange place. It would take me 15 minutes to set up, and other fellows, it would take hours. I wish Jack Tramiel had not killed Commodore, in the way that he did. We would be using far better machines now. There is a 10 year pause in computer development, that I think most people don't know about. This was a 10 year period from "I'm say'en ," 1986 to 1996. Its a lost ten years to get the IBM architecture up to speed. Which people did, eventually and surpassed all the other designs, but there were better ones that just didn't get the market share.

 

[Oaktree]

I had one of those! Big Motorola, and that thing put out over 3 watts, compared to the 5/8 of a watt the new digital phones put out. Using the magnetic mount antenna that came with it, mounted on the roof of the car, that thing could hit a cell tower many miles away. Hated it when everything went digital and I couldn't use it anymore. Much better range than any digital phone; living out in the middle of nowhere range was important to me.

Lot better audio quality too. I worked p/t at a radio station in the 80s/early 90s and we'd use them when we did remote broadcasts. They were fairly easy to interface with a mixer and gave audio similar to landline. Air time was pricey though...the DJs at the remote sites were instructed to only call in a minute or so before they were to go on the air and hang up when their break was over.

 

[MossRoad]

The SX-64 was a fantastic machine for its time. Used one for a few years doing software conventions in the Mid to Late 80's. I just loved the way it could have an external monitor, so I at the booth, could have a Demo at the front using a monitor and could see what they were seeing from the desk facing monitor at the same time. Nothing special now, but then, it was an effort saver. And not very complicated to set up after a long flight, in a strange place. It would take me 15 minutes to set up, and other fellows, it would take hours. I wish Jack Tramiel had not killed Commodore, in the way that he did. We would be using far better machines now. There is a 10 year pause in computer development, that I think most people don't know about. This was a 10 year period from "I'm say'en ," 1986 to 1996. Its a lost ten years to get the IBM architecture up to speed. Which people did, eventually and surpassed all the other designs, but there were better ones that just didn't get the market share.

I started out on UNIX at the newspaper around 1990. It was elegant. Windows came along, and all versions of it since have been pigs. The ONLY reason Windows works, is because the processors can now handle the massive amount of housekeeping it takes to keep it running.

It won the marketing war. But it's a pig.

 

[scootr]

New computer to a pig calling contest. I don't know what the connection is but we do drift. See yall

 

[MossRoad]

New computer to a pig calling contest. I don't know what the connection is but we do drift. See yall

The connection is the current king of operating systems would not work if not for the speed of the processors. They have to be able to be fast enough to correct all the garbage that windows produces. I can't help but think of all the wasted processor time spent on keeping track of all the stupid stuff windows does. And wasted processor time causes heat. Heat causes wasted electrical energy. I'd wager the Windows operating system was been a primary cause of pollution in the generation of electrical energy for the past 20 years, if not more.

I realized all that when I'd look at a UNIX system with a disk defragmentation of 0.002% and a windows system with a disk defragmentation of 35%.

UNIX pulls the file you need, lets you use it, then puts it back where it got it from.

Windows goes to your file cabinet, pulls the folder out, pulls the file out of the folder, leaves some of it in your living room, kitchen, bathroom, basement, and probably the garage, then writes itself a note where it left all the pieces of the file. The next time you need the file, it has to spend the energy to read the note, walk around the house, pick up all the pieces, put them together, then spread them all over creation again. It's stupid, and un-elegant.

That's all I was getting at.

 

[2manyrocks]

The connection is the continual problem of MS Windows being somewhat convenient to use, but also requiring a lot of processing power compared to say various linux OS systems that run so much faster, but are a pain to set up printers and lack of common software applications like tax software, video editing and high end photo processing applications.

Then add in the way MS Win11 running in safe mode now forces users to create a MS account just to install applications that don't come preinstalled leading me to wonder if they aren't positioning themselves for the future day of an OS subscription model like they'd done with Office. And yet again, the new desktop in Win11 moves things around from Win10 to the point one has to wonder what could they possibly have been thinking?

Interesting that competition and innovation has led to better computer hardware, but can we say the same on the OS side of things?

 

[buckeyefarmer]

I think you must be misremembering the year, there. Bag phones came out in the 1980's, and were already falling out of favor by 1990, for all but people requiring connection to the older AMPS networks. .

Bought my bag phone in 1994 for $261. There were no cell phone stores then, had to buy from a commercial radio store. Things were changing rapidly then.

 

[JasperFrank]

I continue to be astounded that Apple never released a generalized OSX version. That opportunity seems to have been entirely wasted. It matters little now, but they could have made some serious in roads in to the MS monopoly by offering a real UNIX to the general public.

Linux, is something I had been attempting to evangelize for many years. And the general pubic is just NOT adopting it. The resistance I've seen first hand, is near pathologically against it and frankly, I don't try to advocate it to anyone anymore.
Zorin and the Mint Distros fill the bill for 80% to 90% of the typical user and they are free and don't have the telemetry. Yet, the transition is just like figuring out the differences between Win 10 and OSX "Big Sur."

On new machines, there isn't much of a difference in speed, until MS sends out an up date, and then you find the Win 7 and 8 systems running much slower.

Older machines can be revived running a Linux OS.

To the original question of a 4K projector. From 25, or so, feet away on a 12 foot screen, I couldn't tell you any difference from a 1080p projector aside from the contrast and brightness, which I've found to be better than 4K setups. The resolution isn't as good as 4K, but the viewing experience is better with 1080p. 1080 projectors are basically free, you just have to buy a new bulb.

 

[BravoXray]

Then add in the way MS Win11 running in safe mode now forces users to create a MS account just to install applications that don't come preinstalled leading me to wonder if they aren't positioning themselves for the future day of an OS subscription model like they'd done with Office. And yet again, the new desktop in Win11 moves things around from Win10 to the point one has to wonder what could they possibly have been thinking?

You can bet a rat's furry behind that MS OS subscriptions are coming.
Just a matter of time until you pay an annual or monthly fee to run Windows.

I'm still running Win 7, and when that gets too risky, I'll probably switch to one of the distos of Linux. I already have one machine with a dual boot Win 7/Ubuntu installed, and am getting it customized to my liking. The main problem is that I have a couple of apps that have no suitable replacements that run on Linux, so I am trying to use Wine or one of the other emulators to run them.
One most of the systems I have set up for friends and customers since Win 10 came out, I install Classic Shell, that replaces that God awful Windows start menu system with all the goofy tiles and alphabetized, strung out menu. What kind of drugs were those programmers on when they came up with that? Classic Shell gives you back a Win 7 or other version menu that can be customized to your tastes.

 

[2manyrocks]

Controlling access to third party apps is probably a step along the road to ongoing OS subscription fees.

 

[WinterDeere]

Bought my bag phone in 1994 for $261. There were no cell phone stores then, had to buy from a commercial radio store. Things were changing rapidly then.

Weird. I was already using a flip phone for at least a year prior to 1994.

 

[WinterDeere]

There is a 10 year pause in computer development, that I think most people don't know about. This was a 10 year period from "I'm say'en ," 1986 to 1996. Its a lost ten years to get the IBM architecture up to speed. Which people did, eventually and surpassed all the other designs, but there were better ones that just didn't get the market share.

Those are the years I was getting my degree in computer engineering, and watching the explosion of development at both Motorola and Intel. You're calling the development of the Pentium a "stall"? What about the PowerPC? Our first non-deterministic operating systems in both MacOS and Win95?

 

[MossRoad]

Those are the years I was getting my degree in computer engineering, and watching the explosion of development at both Motorola and Intel. You're calling the development of the Pentium a "stall"? What about the PowerPC? Our first non-deterministic operating systems in both MacOS and Win95?

Yeah, the pentium was a stall. It was a 32 bit processor that came out a year or two after DEC Alpha 64 bit processor came out. They didn't hit 64 bit for 10 more years.

 

[Locoweed]

Dual booting is one way to accomplish that. Another way is creating virtual machines. I have XP & 10 virtual machines for special needs.

 

[Xfaxman]

I'm still running Win 7, and when that gets too risky, I'll probably switch to one of the distos of Linux.

Check out ChromeOS Flex : https://www.google.com/search?q=chr...l4j69i60l3.30579j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

It will run Linux.

 

[kenmbz]

ATT had a great Unix front end, Novell bought it and it went by the wayside.
It was too bad as that would have given Novell a front end for their servers and made them more competitive. The CEO was removed not too long after this fiasco and his purchase of word perfect.

 

[MossRoad]

Shortly after I started at the newspaper, I think in the early 90's, they started using UNIX on Sun Microsystems hardware when converting from manual markup to electronic pagination of ads. They were elegant things of beauty and paid for themselves quickly. Our other systems ran on VAX's and VMS. Those were OK, but VMS was pretty complicated compared to UNIX.

I had to laugh at this story from 1988...
We'd cringe every time we had to consult the 5' wall of books to find out how to do something in VMS. We could pretty much figure it out on our own with UNIX.

One of the questions that comes up all the time is: How enthusiastic is our support for UNIX? Unix was written on our machines and for our machines many years ago. Today, much of UNIX being done is done on our machines. Ten percent of our VAXs are going for UNIX use. UNIX is a simple language, easy to understand, easy to get started with. It's great for students, great for somewhat casual users, and it's great for interchanging programs between different machines. And so, because of its popularity in these markets, we support it. We have good UNIX on VAX and good UNIX on PDP-11s. It is our belief, however, that serious professional users will run out of things they can do with UNIX. They'll want a real system and will end up doing VMS when they get to be serious about programming. With UNIX, if you're looking for something, you can easily and quickly check that small manual and find out that it's not there. With VMS, no matter what you look for -- it's literally a five-foot shelf of documentation -- if you look long enough it's there. That's the difference -- the beauty of UNIX is it's simple; and the beauty of VMS is that it's all there. -- Ken Olsen, president of DEC, DECWORLD Vol. 8 No. 5, 1984 [It's been argued that the beauty of UNIX is the same as the beauty of Ken Olsen's brain. Ed.]

​

 

[kenmbz]

Dec had vax clusters and shared memory spaces in the late 80's. Sun did not have this until well into the late 90's.
I upgraded a Sun system from i386 to SPARC - around 1990 and that was so stressful.
When the system booted, I just went home and slept, instead of doing all the checks.
The upgrade included changing out the mother board and adding ram boards and then OS upgrades and changes.
I had everything set up and prepared, so it only took me about 18 hours !

 

[MinnesotaEric]

My old PC is a 2017 refurb from Dell. Nice when new but now it's rather average and outdated.

My desktop computer is a 2015 27" iMac with four aging i7s stumbling along at 4.0Ghz, 32GB RAM and terabytes of different SSD storage all used for video editing. Editing 4k video and even downsampling 4k video takes a lot of time now.