maralyn1952

Join Date 12/2004

Life Before Windows 95

Living on the Edge of something wonderful !

Well just from telling you that little bit about me and how things used to be it prompts me to asking for any of you that may just fall on this blog to ask yourselves how you think you would manage without our technology? it is a scary thought you know , you may not think it is as we now all take our computers for granted less you are the same age group as me that is but try to imagine how we all would manage with a phone that had to be attached to a wire on the wall or the desk.... no choices and you know just to even have a phone was amazing those days. Do you remember the first Mobile Phones how heavy and cumbersome they were? and to have a computer that had more than 10meg memory was really something [e digicons]:grin:[/e]

i would be very interested to hear any persons comments on how they imagine we managed or indeed if they think they could manage without all our new innovations it should be fun if you put your minds to it you know think of all that you take for granted ( same as me ) as maybe i am coming up for 60 but i love all the technology I taught myself to use the computer and took my microsoft exams in order to earn a living using the computer as a web services company helping many new companies to literally set themselves up in business using the very same innovations available to us today

Even the software has come on so fast when i started it was with a ZX Spectrum as many of you will remember well when we programmed the games into the machine , saved them to a tape and then hoped that the electricity meter did not run out before you had completed your program [e digicons]>[/e] [e digicons]

When you work now with Windows XP or even Vista you would many of you find it hard to imagine just putting in a cd and the program working ... how would you like to have put in 12 floppy discs just to get a copy of windows 3.1 and that was something else let me tell you for those of you that never done that! each disc carefully numbered and remember before we got to that to load the computer up after formatting our small disc drive and ensuring there was enough space we had to load our DOS ( the latest version naturally ) [e digicons]*_*[/e] must not be without the latest version !!!

Did you ever think how difficult it was to create a web site those first days ? we did not have any of the wonderous software available to us now like Webstyle , Dreamweaver nor could we make our desktops look so fantastic and customised what a wonderful time this is and you know I wish i was born 30 years later so as I could see some conculsion as to what NEXT people like Stardock and Impulse are going to have to offer us ......... it will be an intersting time i think eh? [e digicons]:\[/e]

Anyway please add your comments I am interested to hear how the technological advances have made your life better or worse and if you feel you can mange without your microwave - computers - new phones - ,mobiles thanks for reading

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vStyler

Join Date 11/2004

+919

Well... lets see... before windows 95 I was a fit young man.. now.. I sit in a chair 20 hours a day, need to lose 40lbs and run out of breath checking the mail... snail mail that is [e digicons]:rofl:[/e]

So much for technology making life better. [e digicons][/e]

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Philly0381

Join Date 11/2004

+844

Technology never lives up to the high standards that it sets for itself. [e digicons]:O[/e]

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Well... lets see... before windows 95 I was a fit young man.. now.. I sit in a chair 20 hours a day, need to lose 40lbs and run out of breath checking the mail... snail mail that is

WHy I was a young man back then! Fullof life and energy. Now I am old and gray! WIndows 95 did that to me I say!

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I was building PC's long before they became a household appliance and years before there was such a thing as Windows or a mouse.

Back when I started in 1975 Cobal, Fortran, ALGO 60 and in 1983 Beginners All Symbolic Instruction Code (BASIC) were the standard languages. Hole Punch Cards was the standard information media and you got your printout from a Dot Matrix printer with Tractor Wheel drive.

The main business applications back then were dBase, Lotus 123, WordStar and WordPerfect. But you had to know BASIC to transfer or integrate the information from these apps.

In 1981 DOS changed how an IBM compatible PC was navigated and of course MS Windows changed the world with it's introduction in 1985 with growing interests in a graphical user interface, this is also when the craze for the 2 button mouse started.

When Microsoft came out with Office 3.0 in 1989 it came on twenty-two 3 1/2" floppies because CD ROM wasn't out then.

So to answer your question Maralyn, it is this technological advance that's kept me employed.

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DrJBHL

Join Date 04/2002

+4564

Quoting Philly0381,

reply 2

Technology never lives up to the high standards that it sets for itself.

Ahhhh....but it does keep trying.

Me, an MD ...... and man the info technology has made it sooo easy to keep up with keeping up...when the &%$^% computer works.

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I was building PC's long before they became a household appliance and years before there was such a thing as Windows or a mouse.

And don't forget the joys of 300baud accoustic coupled modems... Or 8" surplus floppyies... Or...

I remember when a friend of mine got the first PC harddrive in our area. Was from Radio Shack (don't remember the model), but it was a whole 5meg and cost a cool $5,000!!!

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Yes I am able to see how it has kept you in business same as me [e digicons]:blush:[/e] however sometimes it does a person good to remember how life was once before we got to where we are today dont you agree?

I know that it is the computer that is always blamed for mistakes and we know it is really never the computers fault but the fault of the person using it ?....... but I wonder if we really appreciate how technology has done so much for so many people that these days would not even be able to work think about the people employed on the high status jobs earning over 30k a year that would not have a job but for the wordspell checker [e digicons]O:)[/e] ( naturally I am not in that category ) I WISH !!

Often times now I do stop and think about how it used to be and because time has moved on so fast along with the new technological advances that even the stores cant keep up with it does me good sometimes to remember how much easier life has become and how .... as said in beginning I am so pleased to have been a witness to these great new innovations... but also as said wish [e digicons]:S[/e] I would be around long enough to see it to some conclusion .. You see silly as some of you may think I am ? I actually do believe that one day in many many years to come they will be able to move matter from one place to another something like on star trek so that there will be no need for aeroplanes and other such dirty transportations that are helping to smother our atmosphere with fumes that are causing Global Warmth as such I would love to be here to see maybe the transportation devices that the technology of today may help infuluence the technology of tomorrow when our chidrens children will be here to see it that is if there is still a WORLD as we know it by then ... and on that i will say I sincerely hope so but if there is I hope that the world will be a more peaceful and forgiving place than we live in today .... thanks for reading and for your comments I look forward to more !!

Also I was a young long haired blonde person when I started all those years ago now a grey haired middle aged person that also has sat at computers for too many hours and definately UNFIT so we would make a great pair !! [e digicons]:X[/e] say no more on that ok

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I remember when having a wireless connection meant I had some soldering to do.[e digicons][/e]

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believe it or not, i still have my first computer, it is a Packard Bell 386SX with 4 mb of ram, and still running DOS 6.2 and Windows 3.1 granted i havent turned it on in almost a year, but i know it will still run, also it had a whopping 40 mb hard drive,(course that is toast) but i did learn on pcs running dos 3.3 funny cause i still to this day remember all those command lines

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Ah, yes, the wonderful first 'real' computer I had, handed down to me from my mother. A 386 with Windows 95. The only thing that I truly remember about that damn thing is all the floppies I got with it, and that it booted up in Dos, and you had to put in the command to bring up Windows [e digicons]:annoyed:[/e] .....(no, please, don't remind me what that was, I have used the last, um.....15 years...yeah, 15 years to forget that. The only person who needs to remember commands like that is my brother, he is the real puter guy, I am just a puter geek who sits at home and reaches out across the world to visit folks like you [e digicons][/e] . ) I feel so spoiled with the technology as it is, and can't wait to be even more spoiled by it. [e digicons]:meow:[/e]

So when does Windows 7 come out(and now remembering we had Windows 95, doesn't that look like we are regressing, not progressing???? [e digicons]o_O[/e] )

OH, look, smilies are back! YAAAAAAYY!!!!!!!!!! [e digicons]\o/[/e] [e digicons]\o/[/e] [e digicons]\o/[/e]

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My first real machine was a custom-built 486 DX2-66 with 2MB RAM and a 400MB HD that ran MS-DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.11 with Norton Desktop.

Ah, those were the days of fiddling with config.sys and autoexec.bat trying to make himem.sys and emm386.exe work for loading device drivers into the upper memory. Then DOS 6 came out and I was busy putting together boot menus. Then I installed Windows 95 and brought that PC for an upgrade of adding another 400MB hard drive (who'd ever need that much space?!?) and bumpung the RAM to a whopping 8MB!

Now I think that my Core 2 Duo 2.4 Ghz machine with 4GB RAM and 512MB Radeon X1950XT video card (tripple-booting between Vista Business Sp1, XP Sp3 and Ubuntu 8.10) is sluggish...

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I remember when having a wireless connection meant I had some soldering to do

[e digicons]:rofl:[/e] [e digicons]:rofl:[/e] [e digicons]:rofl:[/e]

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Used to work in the printing industry, first PC was a 8086, dual floppies (one floppy for the program, the other for saving files) 650K of RAM. Remember using Word & Excel back BEFORE Win 3.1, they ran on DOS, but still had their own pretty 'window' they ran in.

Also those huge 5 1/4" floppies? Yikes!

I just love how on Futurama whenever they go to the printer, it's a dot matix!!

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And don't forget the joys of 300baud accoustic coupled modems... Or 8" surplus floppyies... Or...

How can I - I still have some in my garage.

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I know for a fact that windows 3.1 only had 5 disks...I remember... lol... what killed me the '95 upgrade with 25 disks... omg...

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I just love how on Futurama whenever they go to the printer, it's a dot matix!!

I had one of those too....yeesh... [e digicons]<_<[/e]

Does anyone remember the computer Atari put out? Had those really neat little cassetts you had to put in instead of floppies, took oy an entire desk top. Yeah, had one of those too. What were we thinking back then? [e digicons][/e]

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we never did the atari at my house, first we had the had TRS 80, and then we had a few years later a comadorre 64, and 128, but my dad knew the Amiga would never take off so we never got one...

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vStyler

Join Date 11/2004

+919

My first was a ZX Spectrum, used to play a game called Manic Miner for days... of course that was after hours of typing all the code in to make it play.

Probably my fav game ever.

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I was 14 when I got my Atari 800 with 16K memory and cassette player as a storage device. It got me hooked on tech!

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I know for a fact that windows 3.1 only had 5 disks...I remember... lol... what killed me the '95 upgrade with 25 disks... omg...

What CDs were made for.

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2422

OS/2. The best OS ever.

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Quoting Frogboy,

reply 21

OS/2. The best OS ever.

They always kill off the good ones, don't they?

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Couldn't have been that good, after all it was only half of the operating system

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I have my sinclair zx80 / 81 and cassete tapes

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Windows 3.1. I had an animated bootscreen that was at least 256 colors, might have been thousands, can't remember. There was a program that made themes and it could do pretty much what XP comes with, but not some of the things we have now with Object Desktop, like the weird window shapes. I downloaded hundreds of themes for it from Tucows, a few I still miss. I wish I remembered the name of that free theme program, but it broke later. I remember having a big animated .gif as a desktop also. XP was actually a GUI step back for some of us. Windowblinds (which was already around awhile) fixed most of that, of course, but Bootskin couldn't do what that free Win 3.1 program did until recently, under Vista. That isn't Stardock's fault. Microsoft created all kinds of obstacles. Vista I gather has been another huge headache.

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