I've sort of been in a reminiscing sort or mood this week. After thinking about my old high school, I started thinking about my first computer. I think I bought it in 1993. I didn't know much about computers then, but I was already thinking about writing and I thought I could be more productive with a computer than I would with a typewriter. So, I started asking around and I found an old IBM with an 8088 inside for a relatively cheap price. I don't have a picture of it, but here's a similar computer (note that it cost $3,000 new, wow!--thankfully I bought one used.).
It didn't have a hard drive and the operating system was MS-DOS. It used 5.25-inch floppy disks and you had to know specific DOS codes to type at the prompt in order to get the computer to do what you wanted to do. If you wanted to open a program, you had to type in the .exe file name. If you wanted to copy or save a file, you had to physically type a command in order to do so. I got to where I knew most of the codes and then I heard that a new operating system was taking the place of DOS. It was called "Windows" and I didn't want anything to do with it.
Sure, it sounded easy. Point and click and all that. But, I didn't trust it. I already knew how to do everything I wanted to do with my old computer. How could I really be sure that it would copy and save everything I told it to? And what about my beloved word processing program, WordStar? Would I be able to use it on one of those fancy "Windows" machines?
In 1994, I was at my cousin's house and he was using a Windows-based machine. In fact, he was "online" using a program called America Online. He showed me how I could get up to the minute sports scores, and news, and more information than I could ever want. He also told me how easy it was to save files. And within a month, I had my own windows-based machine and I too was on America Online.
It had a dial up modem with a baud rate of 1200. You can't believe how excited I was when someone figured out how to double the rate to 2400, then 4800, then 9600! Today, it would take about a year and a half to load the home page over at ESPN.com at a 9600 rate, but when it's the best available at the time, you celebrate.
I've lost track of how many computers I've bought since that first one in 1993, but my beloved IBM 8088 DOS machine will always have a special place in my heart. Okay, I sound like a total computer nerd now, but that's not really true. At least, I'm pretty sure it isn't.
