Computers in the Olden Days

Daily writing prompt

Write about your first computer.

3D rendering of a vintage personal computer

I didn’t own a computer until I graduated with my Ph.D.. The University of Illinois had an abundance of computer labs, and I didn’t have money for a computer, being a student. I should talk about the computers I used then, of course. I was a student before Windows came out, and that meant I used DOS operating system with its glowing green cursor on a black background. Soon after, I took a class with Apple IIes, and decided I liked Apple computers better.

I was also active on the PLATO system. PLATO was an educational system at several universities and other sites; its hub was at University of Illinois. In addition to educational lessons, PLATO offered several features that are part of today’s Internet: messaging, email, discussion forums, and group chats. PLATO became a social network for the people who had access to it, including things like online dating and group meets. It was a haven for a geek girl like me.

The first computer I had access to at home was a classic Mac. It was not mine; I borrowed it when I was laid up at home with a broken leg. Those machines were cute, almost portable.

The first computer I bought myself was an Apple IIvx, a desktop computer that cost me $2300. That is in 1993 dollars; the computer would cost $4,992.97 today. It was an exorbitant price, however PC machines had not started running Windows yet and I preferred the WYSIWYG operating system. Not long after I bought this computer, Apple came out with a cheaper and faster computer called Quadra. I was one of the people angry that we had paid so much for an inferior computer, but I had my computer for several years.

Computers today are so much faster, so much more powerful, so much more graphically inclined, that talking about a 1993 computer seems quaint. My computer today (A Samsung Galaxy Ultra 4) is so far beyond what I had back then.

My First Computer

Daily writing prompt

Name the most expensive personal item you’ve ever purchased (not your home or car).

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This question is altogether too easy for anyone who has bought a laptop or a smartphone in their lives. Other than a house or a car, these are likely to be the most major expenses, at least in the US.

I was relatively late to computer ownership, having gotten my first computer as I was finishing graduate school. As a grad student in the late 80s — early 90s, it was not assumed we would have our own computers. There were computer labs all over campus, and I availed myself of those when typing up my dissertation. Knowing that computer labs would not be part of my future as a professional, I bought my first computer, a Macintosh IIvx. In 1993 the computer cost me $2500, which is almost $5k in today’s dollars. I bought it with part of the proceeds from getting hit by a car, otherwise graduate student me would not have been able to afford it.

CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31318

Technology has gotten more powerful and less expensive. I could buy a Mac Mini today for $500, and this little puck of a computer is much more powerful than the IIvx I bought in 1993. The only reason I haven’t bought it is because the form factor isn’t convenient, and I already have a powerful laptop that cost me $1300.

Even today, my computers are the most expensive purchases I make outside of a car or house, even though they have gone down in price. But their utility makes them worth the price.

New Computer

After the incident with the cat peeing on my Surface, and wrestling with a used replacement Surface, I wanted a new computer for my work on books (writing, editing, formatting, creating covers, creating advertisements, etc). The computers I was working on were over three years old, and I could see their end-of-life coming soon.

So, confronted with a $500 off sale on out-of-box Galaxy Book 3 Ultra, we bought it. After a day of playing with it, I have a few observations:

Out of the box, it’s heavy. The specs said 4 lbs, but they forgot to mention the weight of the power brick, which is a metal power adaptor that, if thrown, could kill someone. It is apparently lighter than its direct competitors (mid-level suitable for most graphics tasks).
It has one TB storage and an i7 processor. And a graphics card. So it’s set up for the graphics I do (designing book covers and advertisements). I might push my knowledge base further and see what else these graphics are good for (within my meager ability).
The screen has visually stunning clarity. The book covers my niece designed for me positively glow on it. I’m hoping this clarity reduces eyestrain.
It’s fast. See also i7 processor. (I suppose I could have gotten the i9 model, but it’s too expensive and I don’t know if my skill level deserves that power).
It doesn’t have a touchscreen. Why would it? It’s not a tablet like my Microsoft Surface was. To be honest, I never used my Surface as a tablet. But I used the touchscreen when the Surface got one of its occasional glitches.

So far, so good. No weird glitches (as I have suffered with a few times on the Surface.) Working smoothly. Looks great.

Time for me to go play with it some more.

Computer Problems

Did I mention my darling geriatric kitty, Me-Me, peed on my computer the other day^*? I didn’t know until it started ticking. And zapping. And smoking. And sizzling. Then I watched its battery meter plummet to zero, and that was the end of my computer.

I would do very poorly living in the future I’m imagining for my friends at Barn Swallows’ Dance right now, one in which they wait for the technological world as they know it to collapse. I have discovered that my computer is an extension of me — at least an extension of my creativity.

I know I could write on paper, but the convenience is gone. With the current technology, I can write and edit in Scrivener (a composition software), proofread in ProWritingAid, and format in Atticus. I can download the ePub file or pdf file which will go straight into KDP for publication. I can create covers for the book in Photoshop. If that sounded like a bunch of babble to you, I just described the steps of writing a novel from writing to publication.

I now have a new — well, used — Surface Book 2, hopefully temporary. Once I got rid of the glitch that caused mouse clicks to fail and me to consider yeeting it through a window, it’s working pretty well. It’s a pretty muscular machine with a separate video card and an i7 processor (That’s technobabble for “good for graphics but not top of the line video professional specs”).

My goal for our tax return is to get a similarly-situated machine with updated specs, maybe a faster i7 chip. The biggest thing about a new machine over this one is that this one is not only technologically obsolete, but is probably at the end of its service life, or how long it will live before it breaks. And I don’t want to be without a computer again anytime soon.

^*You may wonder what would possess a 14-year-old cat to crawl on top of a table and maneuver herself to pee on a computer. I myself wonder. My best guess is jealousy, as I pay a lot of attention to my computer.

Second Best

My new computer feels just like my old computer, which is understandable because it’s the same model, only a bit more souped up. I’m paying attention to its speed, which should be faster with a higher processor. I have to find a test to check out the video card.

The new, the shiny, the improved attract us as consumers. Computer manufacturers play upon this and make incremental changes to their products, charging high prices for a product not significantly different than the previous one. How much better is an i9 processor than an i7?

I wanted the shiniest and newest, until I realized that it would cost over twice as much as this one, very gently used, souped-up computer.

The Used New Computer

I’m getting a new (to me) computer today. It’s used, it’s a Surface Book 2 like mine is, but it is close to the top-of-the-line for a Book 2 and it cost about $700. I’m going to be happy to have a graphics card (for using Sketchup for making maps of areas in my books. And an i7 processor instead of an i5. And twice the hard drive space. and 16 GB RAM.

This will result in a whole afternoon porting things from one computer to the other, which will kill a lot of time. But it will be worth it.

We’re pretty frugal here, choosing to buy the slightly less recent models rather than the newest. Ok, admittedly, if I could afford a top-of-the-line Book 3 — I still wouldn’t get it. So much of the price of the newest model is that it’s new. I would have had to get a more modest computer (like my current computer at i5, 256 mb ssd drive, no video card.

So this is my new (to me) computer, which I should get a lot of use out of.

I got my computer back!

Finally got my computer replaced.

I updated the system and it didn’t break.

All my programs work.

I guess miracles do happen 😛

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My preferred computer is a Microsoft Surface Book because it can go with me pretty much anywhere, and it has a hard keyboard (as opposed to the Surface Pro, which doesn’t work well on one’s lap).

I have a computer I used when mine was in the shop, and it’s a monster of a Dell gaming machine. It’s impossible to carry around, and there’s a glitch in the sound now for no apparent reason. I got it for graphics, which I explore at times; ironically the new Surface Book for Business with its small form factor outperforms the behemoth in graphics. So all I need is about $2k to upgrade for both. No problem, right? (HA!)

I have my favorite computer back, and it’s good enough. Plenty good enough!

Disgruntled with my computer.

I have no words of wisdom today; just a grumble.

Remember the new computer I got a few weeks ago? It’s on the fritz; same problem as the previous one. The USB port failed again, and it keeps making that “boop boo buh boop!” noise Windows machines make when you plug something in to the USB port.

I am beginning to think the surface book has a problem with its USB ports, in which case anything they replace this with will have the booping/failed USB port problem. Which makes me upset — I didn’t get a computer for it not to work.

I hope they can fix this to my satisfaction.

Waiting for my new computer

I have a computer — a five-year-old MacBook which has served me well, as long as I didn’t care about having more than 230 MB of storage, a separate video card, and an OS that occasionally forgets to perform the “click” part of “point and click” six times a day and has to be restarted. Obviously I mind, so I’m getting a new computer.

I’m getting a new computer with some interesting specs:

7th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-7700HQ Quad Core
Windows 10 Home 64-bit English
16GB, 2400MHz, DDR4
128GB Solid State Drive (Boot) + 1TB 5400RPM Hard Drive (Storage)
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1050Ti with 4GB GDDR5

I don’t really know what any of this means, except that the hard drive has a separate boot disk and the main drive is over 4x bigger than what I have, and that it’s a gaming computer.

I’m a writer. Why do I need a gaming computer?

The simple explanation is that I’m using a program called Sketchup, available free in its most basic form on the web, to render maps for places I write about. For example, three of my books take place on the ecocollective (a collective, but not communal, living arrangement) called Barn Swallows’ Dance (It doesn’t really exist, but if I did, I’d probably live there). I wanted a map of the place because I have at best shaky visual memory, which I believe I’ve said before. So I put together a layout of a map of Barn Swallows’ Dance on Sketchup using already created components, not realizing they were three-dimensional. They were!

That gave me lots of potential, but lots of frusrtration, because my computer was much too slow to act on the objects in my map. I thought they were at ground level, but in three dimensions, they were floating in the air! And I would adjust them according to what I saw on the screen, but there was a delay, so the objects went from floating in the air to buried in the ground, and my computer wouldn’t let me find the down-to-earth mode. It was like a very slow-motion game of whack-a-mole.

That was two years ago, and I’ve long gone past writing those books, although I am sending Mythos (the first) to my beta-readers soon. (Note: Do you want to be a beta-reader? Please email me at: lleach (it’s a link) if so.) I still would like to fix that project, because what’s there is intensely cool.

I also have a new project that goes along with the book-in-waiting Whose Hearts are Mountains, which is currently last in the writing queue. It also takes place at an ecocollective, one built largely underground in the desert. The housing is based on a conceptual idea (and I will have to find and credit the architect involved.). The tube habitats he drew up have not been created in 3-dimensions, so I would have to do that myself, probably in pieces. No, I’ve never created my own piece before, but it’s another skill to learn just for myself.

I wish all the things I learned were useful to others — teaching, of course, is. Writing — the journey is still out. Disaster mental health — very useful to me and to my college for accreditation, but I would also have to take a master’s in counseling or social work to become certified in disaster mental health. (No, I am not doing that) I might be useful in consulting with the city or county, but I’ve had a history of not being taken seriously by the guys with trucks that do the planning. If I could get the Ministerial Alliance to quit quibbling over butts in pews long enough to see that they need to mobilize so we could certify disaster case managers (which I am qualified to do)… sorry for the divergence. It’s a sore point.

Anyway — odd little hobbies like my gardens (and trying to get rare seeds to grow), fishing, and the Sketchup design are things I do for myself. I push myself to get more competent (I don’t seem to be able to do things without that drive to improve unless I’m super-depressed) Hobbies are flow activities; they’re things I lose myself in and it’s like meditation, only with a satisfying level of challenge. I’m hoping Sketchup rendering becomes another flow activity for me.

And I hope that computer will help.