My Computing History

At the moment (late 2010) the Apple computers are utterly dominant.  People come to me for buying advice for a new PC, and my return remark is always now along the lines of 'it's a last resort if you can't afford a mac'.... Either that or run a PC with a 10 year old operating system on it, and pray you don't get swamped by viruses.

It wasn't always like that however, and I am sure it will not always be so.  Looking back at my past computers, I realise how fickle the industry is, and how much it has changed.  Here is a list of the computers I have owned from the start.  As you can see, they were rarely 'mainstream'.

My first computer: Acorn Electron (butchered) - Era: 'The good ol' crazy days'

I must have been about 7 years old when my Dad brought home this computer to play with. I always loved cheesy sci-fi movies at that age, and was 'wowed' by the Acorn back in the day.  Even just seeing letters appear on a TV when you pressed buttons was 'wowing'.  I remember though that this computer had a caveat.  Originally with a massive 32Kb of memory, this particular example had been 'raided' and left with about 4kb.  My first computer had no tape or disk storage, and only 4Kb of RAM.  This didn't stop one of my favourite passtimes starting.  Using the basic language it had to draw patterns on the screen. 

I remember the spiro-bound manual with all the functions listed out.  I didn't understand a lot, but through copying examples and trial and error, I remember being able to create patterns.  Obviously because of the limited memory of this computer, some of the functions didn't work, and the program would freeze, and you would have to start again.  Can you imagine anyone doing that these days?

Also in the house, the Sanyo Personal Computer

I remember ours having twin 5.25" disk drives, and they were truly wizardry!  Of course, I was only allowed to play with this one under supervision!  I remember it being used for word processing, and a dot-matrix printer coming to the house.

Computer no 2: the Tatung Einstein - Era: The BBC

Spec: 4Mhz Clock, 64Kb RAM

Perhaps the problem with this computer was it's name?  Or it's size?  It was enormous!  Mine has twin 3" disk drives (the sort that stored about 250K, and had a double sided disk, but with one head - you had to turn the disk over occasionally to get data from the reverse side!!).  Anyhow, I loved it.  I remember though that by the time I got one, it's arch rival, the BBC had won the race, and the Tatung was falling back in support and popularity.  Also, I remember to use it was particularly obtuse.  Yes it could do a lot more than the Acorn, but the language was really hard, and difficult to get into.  The machine stumped me really, but I did have fun with the games that it came with, and some others that I bought.

Computer 3:  Sinclair PC-200 - Era: MS-DOS & Amstrads

Spec: 8086, 512KB ram, 3.5" floppy, 8MHz clock

I told you I was an 'underdog' supporter!  This was the era of the Amstrad 1512 and 1640 for business users, and the amazing Atari ST for everyone else (the Amiga was probably being thought about somewhere).  It was mid-school; perhaps 1989 and I started with this computer.  While it looks like a proprietary machine, it is actually a 8086 based PC with a futuristic 3.5" 512Kb floppy drive!  So actually, this machine was excellent, and probably was responsible for launching me into a career with computers.  It ran everything that the Amstrad users ran, but with a better disk drive.  My friends at school had Amstrads, and of course they all used 5.25" drives, so transferring games was interesting!  If you look at the lid of this computer, it swings up to reveal 2 expansion slots.  I remember having a Miniscribe 32Mb hard drive which sort of stuck out the top of the machine very dodgily!  It was fantastic, as this meant storage of files, introduction to hard drives and lots more!  I also remember making countless serial cables and transferring stuff down cables between computers - magic!

Also at the time we had an Amstrad PPC640, one of the first 'luggable' computers!  This was Duracell's best friend as it ate through standard batteries if you were crazy enough to run it on battery!

Computer 4: DanTech 386 - Era: War of the Clones!

Spec, 32Mb hard drive, 386sx 16Mhz, 2Mb RAM, VGA display!

It was the era of the clone PC, and massive performance increases.  The Amstrad had shown the world that you didn't have to make proprietary computers, but that everyone could make compatible ones, and people would adopt you.  The Microsoft OS had won, and I remember this machine shipping with the very first 'Windows' operating system.  This machine was properly expensive - I remember around £1000, back in about 1991 - I had worked and scraped and saved (and got a lot of assistance from parents) for literally the past couple of years.  As I was saving, new things kept coming out, and new specs were available for lower prices.  I bought in at just the right time I think, the 386SX made the high end processor from Intel cheap enough to be accessible.  I binned windows immediately - couldn't see the point (and it was rubbish back then), but having all that space on the hard drive was amazing.  The learning cure was steep, but I found games far too entertaining for my own good!  At some point, I saved up and bought a 'Sound Blaster' which was from a little known company called 'Creative Labs'.  This product revolutionised PCs, giving them a unified and capable sound output.  The computer merged suddenly with my other passion, music.

Computers 5,6,7,8,11,12,13: Constantly upgrading / morphing - Era: The Faceless PCs

The DanTech was really one of the first of a new wave of small businesses that bought in components that they married themselves to produce clone computers.  Over the following years, I built a number of computers for my own use, and remember owning 486s, Pentiums, AMDs, all kinds of wierd computers.  It was fun at the time, but now looking back, there's no record of any of these faceless machines that were always some sort of experiment. And because every computer was unique, there were times when certain things would not work with others... I'm glad this era is over (for most).

There was only one computer that really stood out that I bought as a complete computer during this time:

Computer 8: Amiga 1200

I made a small departure from my home made PC monsters around 1995 with the amazing Amiga A1200.  What an amazing bit of kit this was.  Not much to look at, but in terms of graphics and sound, it was MILES ahead of its time.  It's a shame that Commodore developed it and I think undersold it.  Business and the Arts didn't take the machine seriously despite the fact it could do more graphically and musically than any PC on the market when it was launched.  And that was the end of another contender! 

Computer 9: IBM Thinkpad - 365

Spec: 486DX, 8Mb RAM, 320Mb Hd, COLOUR SCREEN!!

When I started work after A levels in my family business, I invested in this marvellous machine.  It was tiny (well, for then!).  The laptop accompanied me on a trip to the USA.  It was a fantastic bit of kit.  What was the catch?  The odd little rubber finger in the centre of the keyboard was the mouse.  Actually, it wasn't a bad bit of tech as an interface.  Windows was here to stay by this point, but you still had to rely on DOS to get things running properly.  It had a TFT flat screen, a technology that has only very recently been superseded - this laptop had one of the very first.

More faceless desktops followed, usually quite powerful for the time.

Computer 13: Dell Dimension 9200 - Era: Brands overtake Clones & Spec no longer important

Spec: Pentium 3GHz dual core, 2Gb RAM, 250Gb HD

It took a long time for this to happen, but eventually the erratic development of PCs settled a little, and the cost/power of computers that people purchased from some new massive brands drove the 'micro' and self-builders out of the market completely.  This DELL was quite something in terms of what it did.  Actually it is still running now, with virtually the same stuff in it, and it still runs everything released today prety much.  It took hardware that long to get to the stage where virtually everything runs everything. 

Computer 14:  Sony Viao - Era: Lithium Batteries and Laptops outselling Desktops,

Spec: Intel Core-2 processor, 1Gb RAM, 120Gb HD, sony Fe770

At the point when I got a job working for Business Link, I was equipped with this absolutely fantastic computer.  As a piece of engineering, I think it was the most beautiful, well engineered, reliable computers ever made.  It is certainly the best in my list, as it still looks good today!  The only problem was that it was locked down to the corporate network, so I never got to use it for my own needs, but as a business computer it was unparalleled. At some point I was given a second 'upgraded' Sony laptop for a special project I was running.  In comparison, it ran hot, was slow and creaked when moved around.  This really showed the machine above to be as excellent as it was.

Computer 15: Macbook Pro - Era: Windows Vista causes a great downfall... The tide turns!

Spec: 2.2GHz Core2 Duo, 2Gb RAM, 120Gb HD

So, leaving business Link, I started ginzola.  I had to buy some new kit to get started.  I still had the DELL, but you can't see Clients with a tower, I needed a laptop.

I had been impressed when visiting many businesses that stress levels in offices that run macs seem lower.  Further than that, Vista was launched, and it was clearly a real dog.  I had friends and family who if they weren't complaining about problems running things wanted computers that ran faster because stuff was taking so long.  I had a project to do in Flash and I needed to update, so I ignored my prejudice, and bought this laptop with Adobe CS3.  Knowing a bit of Linux helped.  I just wish I'd bought shares in Apple when I bought this machine... a lot of other people were doing the same as me, and Apple has since become dominant everywhere.

Computer 16: Mac Pro - Era: The consumer 'style' computers

Spec: 3.0GHz "Nehalem" Quad core, lots of TB HD, 8Gb RAM

Although this is a professional computer, this was the era of 'designer'.  Apple have made computers 'cool' things to have in the house.  The spec and what a computer does is actually now playing second fiddle to how it looks, and makes you look.  Products like the iPhone, iPad have lead the way, and the successful PCs out there are micro netbooks that look stylish or have fashion associations. 

Computer 17: Macbook Air (2010) - Era: Solid State

Spec: 2.1 Core2 Duo, 4Gb RAM, 256Gb Solid Drive.

I believe that this computer will be seen in years to come as the first of a new and dominant breed of computers.  The new Macbook Air does away with so much, and had become something that is so portable and useful and simple in the process.  The first computer in this list with a magnetic hard drive dates right back to the early 90s (Sinclair PC2000).  All of the machines since have featured at least one hard drive using the same fundamental technology.  Many modern laptops have solid state hard drives, but they still emulate the behaviour of the legacy disks.  This Macbook Air however features a completely new approach - flash based storage that completely does away with this arcane technology completely.  This makes it much smaller, lighter, more robust, faster.  It's a bit shy on storage compared to bigger traditional drives, but this will change for sure in years to come.  About time too!