1989 Laptop discussion

Keep this at the back of your mind when you complain about something in 2020.

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I remember learning programming ALGOL 60 at this “machine”!

perm

Was in 1972!

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First laptop I had was a Zenith SlimSPORT 286. It was like 3" slim. It was awesome for word processing.

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Amazing share @professor
No USBC’s here :rofl:

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This video I encourage watching it all in full. 30 minutes.

There’s discussion of harddrive vs floppy drive, screen, battery life and the early Internet.

At the time of this video I was working professionally as a programmer on VAX VMS, IBM MVS (Amdahl) and had owned a Sinclair ZX81, Spectrum and touched a Commodore PET, Commodore 64, Commodore PET, BBC Micro.

Many of these had no harrdrive, only floppy drives and you had to boot up the OS off Floppy 1 and then use Floppy 2 for your program, so the use of 3.5" drives made laptops portable.

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I was working with those devices a lot.
I remember a SGI workstation I got, - > was about 60.000 DM this time.
Got less power than every mobile has today!
A great thing was the first little MacIntosh I was using (That little box)

But really most innovative was ATARI.
I am sure these company was “killed” by the big ones, too successful in those days!

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Yes, SGI was 4 years old, in Mountain View near where this San Mateo video was made.

I didn’t touch SGI until about 1993, probably was a SGI Indy but looking at the timeline may have been an Iris.

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I dont remember the model , could have been such an Indy.
The time fits.

Normally we were using HP workstations at the uni.

Yeah, our first computer in 1983 was a Zenith with 8086 processor. We had the “cool” family because we had 2 5.25” drives. We used DOS 3.1, and my dad used WordPerfect to write his Ph.D. dissertation. I played a golf game which was mostly text based with ASCII graphics.

The only place to buy a floppy disk was the local high school’s computer teacher. I think I paid $3 for each disk.

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My first laptop was a HP something around 2004. Paid $1200 for it and was pretty good for the time. It was 9lb in weight so I have very strong arms and shoulders now. Sold it on CL around 2008 for $600 so it wasn’t too bad of a deal.

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So is this 1989 laptop going on sale this Christmas… :rofl: Be fun to find one and give it to the kids and tell them that you are sorry but it is 2020.

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I remember I have an old Vajo somewhere.
Its an antiquity.
So many beautiful ports, but no USB-C! :rofl:

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And to think we carry a mini computer in our pockets lol

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I kind of miss these days though. 3.5 inch floppies with the locking drive.
Might have to download the Apple IIe emulator to play this game and Peter Rabbit for nostalgia…

I didn’t get a laptop until college because “it wasn’t necessary”.

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Also fun fact from the Social Dilemma documentary:
“CPU power has increased roughly 1 trillion times since 1960”

It’s the fastest and the most increase of any tech specs in any field I believe.

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Yeah but Microsoft took most of the performance gain away.

Having reported another spammer I reminded how well intentioned we all were when we helped get the Internet started

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I remember walking past Radio Shack in the 80s and seeing these holiday demos playing. My parents weren’t too thrilled the year where the only thing on my Christmas list was a new computer. :rofl:

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Oregon trail…High school memories… May have to try to find that program and play it a couple times to see if I can beat or just die several times of dysentery while playing it. :rofl:

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Who knows this? :rofl:

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What’s that?
Lol