Libertine: On the Prowl

Vidi, vici, veni -- I saw, I conquered, I came. _______________________________________________________________

Ten Years On

10:40, 2008-Mar-19 .. Posted in personal .. 14 comments .. Link

I realized the other day that I've been a computer user and have been online for ten years now.

I'd wanted a computer as soon as personal computers were introduced, but because they were quite expensive at first, I was never able to afford one. If I remember correctly, the first IBM PCs back in the 80s cost a staggering six thousand dollars, with their monochromatic monitors and laughably paltry hard drives.

Fortunately, the trend has been that as computers have grown more sophisticated over the years, they've also become more affordable at the same time.

Still, for a long time, the price of a computer put them out of my reach. My first technological advance up from a typewriter was a word processor with a monochrome monitor, which I got in 1992. I think I paid something like four hundred bucks for it. As I remember, it had only one font on it, and you had two choices as to font size, 10 and 12, using the old typewriter terms of "pitch". Some word processors also provided 15 "pitch" as well.

The main value of this kind of word processor was that one could get their text perfect before committing it to paper. Storage was available on floppy disks, but each disk took only about ten to twelve pages of single spaced lines.

When a buddy of mine got one of the original Pentium computers, a Compaq Presario, in 1995, my desire to get one of my own only increased.

Finally, in 1998, after getting my inheritance after a two and a half year delay, I got my first computer. It was a 2 gig (count 'em -- two!) Gateway Pentium II. I had to pay two grand for it and I thought I was really uptown.

I signed up with a local dialup internet provider for 29.95 a month. That was back in the days of limited hours of service -- that thirty bucks was for only 150 hours of time per MONTH. Any time over that, and I'd have been paying a dollar an hour. Fortunately, they soon went to unlimited service. I can't imagine trying to keep within 150 hours a month now.

When I first went online, I was big into Yahoo chat rooms, which was in the days before advertising bots had taken it over and back when you couldn't use swear words in a chat room. For instance, if you typed "blow job", Yahoo rendered that as "puppy"! To this day, I can't hear the word puppy without snickering a bit.

I started with Windows 95, Internet Explorer 3, Eudora Lite email, and Word 97. I remember the first time I did an "illegal operation" -- it made me wonder what the hell I'd done and I was concerned that the cyber police were going to come along and fine me for something. I also remember the first time my computer froze and locked down on me -- I couldn't figure out what I'd done wrong and thought I'd broken the damned thing.

I'd had some snail mail correspondents back then, but they all fell by the wayside once I had people I could email, instead. I soon discovered Instant Messaging, with ICQ being my first IM program. I didn't stick with that very long; I moved to AOL IM and then to Yahoo IM, where I remain today.

Not long after going online, I discover message boards about all sorts of topics, and I still enjoy participating on the number of them today, though I've changed which boards I'm active on over the years. NASCAR message boards were the first ones I was active on, but I don't even read NASCAR boards at all any more.

This was also in the days before blogs. At that time, people were getting personal web sites with decidedly bare bones graphics, usually of one uniform (and ugly) color with severe font restrictions.

I discovered blogging in 2004, when a friend made in a chat room in 2002, told me I should start one and write about my less-than-conventional life. I started and abandoned two blogs at Diary-X and Diaryland, mainly because of their bare-bones appearances and lack of customization features. Finally, I started a blog at Blog-City in April of 2004, which I still maintain today and it now has three-quarters of a million hits. I started another blog at Modblog in August of 2004, as a blog full of my actual sexual experiences. When Modblog crashed and most Modbloggers ended up at the first EFX2, I ended up there as well, but I decided to make my EFX a mirror blog of Blog City and move the sex blog to Blogger. When the first EFX crashed, I started another Blogger blog to be yet another mirror blog, and then recreated it once again on the present EFX.

After ten years of computer and internet use, I can't imagine how I got along without it. I've made friends from all over the world with my computer, bought items unavailable in my own area by computer, kept in touch with family much cheaper than using the phone or traveling. I pay my bills online, I get my news and weather online, found new relatives while searching my family tree online, and so on. It's made all the difference in the world in my life. I would give up my TV, before I'd give up my computer.

How long have you been online?

Leave a Comment

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12:31, 2008-Mar-19 .. Posted by birdsnest
i've been using computers since i was 10.
19 years. been online since i was 16.
13 years.
i even use to set up a chat with my friends using the phone line pre-internet. i had a mac and they had a pc and we still got it to work.
they lived about 60 miles away.

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12:42, 2008-Mar-19 .. Posted by libertine
I'm a different generation from you. When I was a teen, "computers" were these refrigerator sized boxes containing reel to reel tapes that only big businesses could afford to have -- and had much less capability than the computer I'm using now.

You have to remember that I was in high school when "Pong" came out.

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01:15, 2008-Mar-19 .. Posted by birdsnest
yeah i know.
i'm cutting edge!
yeah right. my niece can design websites and handle flash.
i cant even make my blog look pretty.

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02:32, 2008-Mar-19 .. Posted by Aielman
I got my first computer in December of 1981...the IBM PC. For some unexplained reason, my old man showed up at the door with it a couple weeks before Christmas.

The first time I got online was with Fido in 1983 and mostly hung out on OSUNY and the Demon Roach Underground.

I got on the web with AOL 1.0 and worked for them for a time when they came out with 3.0. The first email address on the web that I had was all4chaos@hotmail.com, which was my handle for years and is still in working use, that I got the day after Hotmail went live, July 5, 1996.

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02:53, 2008-Mar-19 .. Posted by birdsnest
yeah i had a hotmail addy when they first came out.
every one though hotmail was kinda gay.
idiots.

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03:25, 2008-Mar-19 .. Posted by Aielman
We liked it because we could get and send email while at work because noone had any kind of filters on any firewalls available at the time to exclude webmail.

It was also central...I could use it on any computer, which I couldn't do with the popmail accounts I had with various different bbs providers.

Was a pretty genius idea. They had 8 million subscribers in the first year.

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06:03, 2008-Mar-19 .. Posted by thebigp
I have been online for 9 1/2 years now. My first machine was a Packard Bell with a 13" monitor, 6GB Hard drive, 64 MB of RAM and a 300mhz Pentium II processor with Windows 98. I got it at Staples for $1600 and we got an unlimited dialup plan for $24.95 a month from our phone company.

Just to show how much computer pricing has changed, here are the other two computers I have bought since then:

HP Pavilion w/15" monitor, 566mhz Celeron, 128MB RAM, 15 GB HD, Windows 98, 4x CD Burner: $1000

Emachines T5048 w/19" monitor, 3.4Ghz Pentium 4HT, 512 MB RAM, 160GB Hard Drive, CD/DVD burner, Windows XP Media Center Edition: $409

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07:36, 2008-Mar-19 .. Posted by Aielman
Actually, computer prices haven't changed all that much. You just have a much wider range of products available.

A computer near the top of the line, with fairly standard bells and whistles will run you about $3000 now, which was the same price our first IBM PC was if you adjust for inflation.

What you didn't have 10 years ago was the ability to buy a usable machine for less...and now you can.

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07:38, 2008-Mar-19 .. Posted by thebigp
Aiel - you have forgotten to factor in the inflation factor. A $3000 machine in 1988 was a hell of a lot more money than a $3000 machine in 2008, right?

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07:39, 2008-Mar-20 .. Posted by Aielman
I was factoring for inflation. The IBM PC was just over $2k. That was at the very end of 1981. It had no hard drive, two 5 1/4 floppies and was the hottest thing on the market.

When I put together my first gaming rig it cost me about $2500 10 years ago. It was a pentium, which I waited for 3 months to come out, with a whopping 8M of ram and a huuuuuge 2gig hard drive. Right now, if I did the same, it would run me about $3500, but part of that would be because of the high cost of top end motherboards, a 1k watt psu, 4gig of memory and the fact that I would want an all aluminum full tower case. You could by the same thing with a standard intel board for about $3k and even less if you didn't insist on the name brands I would want.

That's roughly the same price when you take inflation into account.

In fact...if I was to put together a really slick game machine, I could easily spend $8k-$10k without even blinking.

The difference is, what I consider to be an "acceptible" computer, and what others do, is vastly different. I seriously doubt Wil is worried about having enough machine to be able to play something like Crysis in 1900x1200 with 4 x AA and all the visual candy turned on, nor does he feel the need for high SYSmark or PCmark scores for office aps, or the ability to compress a 500M file with winrar in less than 45 seconds. He is also unlikely to care what front side bus speed he can overclock to with stability, with or without a watercooled rig. Like most folks, he wants to be able to get on the web, surf and use productivity software in a reasonably quick fashion.

What's different now is the rather large hardware spread. Sure...I can go in and buy a desktop for less than $1k. But it isn't going to hold a candle to that $3k machine, but it doesn't need to because it will be used for basic web surfing and with standard office aps. Ten years ago, you didn't have that spread.

That's the true difference.

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05:16, 2008-Mar-20 .. Posted by littleMissConfused
I bought my very first computer about 12 years ago. I paid $25.00 for it from the place I worked at. It was really basic, not much more them a word processor. It had floppy discs and the letters on the screen where orange. Worst thing about it was that they were all from a part of the company that was in Mexico. All the programs they gave me with it were in Spanish!

The next computer I had was given to me by hubby. It was a valentines day gift about 10 years ago. I had just started working at the delivery company from hell and used a computer at work daily. Since I didn't know a thing about them he thought if I had one I could teach myself...it helped, but I still don't know much except; I push buttons..it does things.

I don't think I could ever give one up now. I use it too much for paying bills and keeping track of financial things. I still don't know any more then I push buttons and it works.

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06:02, 2008-Mar-20 .. Posted by thebigp
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....sorry I drifted off with the lofty techno speak. *LOL*

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04:57, 2008-Mar-22 .. Posted by sladewilson
I believe I got my first computer back in 1984. A Packard Bell joint. No Windows or anything like that. DOS baby...

Yeah, I'm old school. The monochrome monitor with the gold type. Fonts? Yeah, right. Some bs word processing thing. Upgraded to an Epson and then got me a Compaq Presario.

That's when I got super serious with it.

Got me a Gateway.

I've been thru at least six pcs and ten printers.

I'll say it again.

Yeah, I'm old school. Those were the days....

EclectaComment

05:06, 2008-Mar-28 .. Posted by Eclectablog
I got my first computer in 1993, 15 years ago. It was a 4 MB Intel 286 assembled by this Asian family that ran a small computer company in my town. It came with Microsoft Works. One day I tried to install Windows but it would only run in monochrome and used up ALL the storage! LOL

I used that computer online as soon as it was available and had free dial-up through the local university. Often I'd get a busy signal. I used a text-only web browser called "Lynx" and found stuff online using something called "Gopher". I bought a book early on that taught me how to use "the internet". I still have it. It was outdated about 10 minutes after it rolled out of the printing press.

Oh, and I actually BOUGHT my first copy of Netscape Navigator. Heh...