Life Between 0 and 1

I think the hardest part for most people to cope with when it comes to technology in general is the speed at which it changes.  Take my obvious change of template design.  Small potatoes when you consider the ground breaking work being done right now at most companies, but my Mom would have an issue.

“I liked the old design” she would say.

“I got tired of it” I would say.

And it would go back and forth like that for about 5 minutes until I got bored with it and moved the conversation onto something else not related to the design of my blog.

As I sit here typing on my Core i5 laptop that barely has a scratch on it (still newish), I think back to the very first computer I ever owned.  When I say owned, I mean the first computer I purchased with my own money that I earned on my own without anyone elses help in purchase.  A whopping $3,000 garnered me a 486 DX2 with 4MB of RAM and a 250MB hard drive.  Had a color VGA monitor and a dot matrix printer, both purchased separately.  Yeah, they did that back in the day…. annoying.  Anyway, that little purchase kept me working well for about 8 years before I sold it to a friend for a fraction of what I paid for it and they used it for 5 more years.  Now you ask how is that possible?  I’ll tell you.

Computers back then were built much better, designed to last for years, and had components primarily made in the United States.  The computers now are the polar opposite of that.  I think they woke up and took a queue from light bulb manufacturers where they make stuff to last only 2-4 years before you need to purchase new stuff.  When have you ever picked up a 5+ year old laptop and said “this thing still works great”?  Chances are, if you use computers like I do, its not too often.  Once the shiny newness wears off, I treat computers the same way I treat any other tool.  My old workhorse Dell Inspiron 1200 lasted several more years than it should have and the poor keyboard paid the price.  All missing keys and stuff, it practically cried when I would open it up and start using it.

My new laptop hasn’t seen that type of punishment yet, but I’m sure when it does its mostly Chinese parts will not bear the brunt of my hammer fingers and rough treatment in and out of the backpack.