Owning this thing meant you had to do most of any kind of programming yourself in 'Basic A+'. Then you hooked up the audio jacks to a cassette recorder to save the software program you composed. If you didn't anything you did was completely lost. I learned early on you had to save at least 3 copies because almost all the time reloading it didn't work due to different tape speeds the recorder was prone to.
My next step up had me acquiring a larger computer. A telephone modem. Then signing up for AOL
Logging in went like this (only if all went well).
Then I moved to 'CompuServe".
Also a dialup but with greater offerings.
Same monetary conditions applied.
1989
All of these were long before we ever heard of hackers.
Much has changed over the years, some of it for the worse. Webpages have become memory and graphically intensive. Annoying auto-playing videos, popups and countless ads have now become the norm. It's become so commercialized one has to wade through all the garbage to even get to why they came there in the first place. However I could have never once imagined how one day I could do nearly all my banking and shopping online using my credit card. So that's a good thing progress has given us.
Point is...
I've been around computers since nearly the beginning. I've created on my own a huge spreadsheet (complete with macros) in Excel. It gives me more information then one could imagine. It contains all my billings, checks, utility expenses and budgets since 2004. Other spread sheets are for my home inventory, car records, telephones/addresses, grocery list and a more. This computer has stored over 40,000 mp3's, family photos and gigabytes of videos and more. Over the last 30 years it's still amazes me how far computers have come. So too how inexpensive they've become.
There is a couple of things I learned over the past 30 years or so. (1) Try to avoid storing anything in "the cloud" when possible (some programs require it). (2) Backup, backup, backup. Then backup again on two other hard drives, with three different formats. (3) Ignore software that nags for updates. They are all about getting information rather then improving. If software works don't do it. If it's not broken it doesn't need fixing. I haven't updated my Windows for 3 years and have yet to have a problem. Of course some of these apps do it without your knowledge or permission anyway. (4) Hover the mouse over a link or examine it's properties before clicking. No matter what it says doesn't mean it's going there. Much like the spoofed phone ID's when getting a call. (5) Don't feed the trolls. Block them. Ignore them.
Logging in went like this (only if all went well).
Users would pay a monthly fee to dial up a 1-800 number and be limited to so many minutes a month. You had to carefully monitor yourself or you'd be billed extra charges. In fact you could be in the middle of the something and the service would without warning simply disconnect. By being billed, I mean "billed". They did take charge cards over the internet at that time. AND.. the worst problem of all nobody could pick up or use the telephone while the computer was connected. So we got a second line just for the computer,
Nearly every program I was able to download came from what were known as local 'billboards' you'd dial separately from the one AOL provided. These were where someone would offer use of their home computer across their personal telephone line to others to exchange files. Some charged most were happy with one upload for every two you downloaded. These programs were very simplistic. Certainly no music or graphics at he time. Most were basic pixilated games.
Also a dialup but with greater offerings.
Same monetary conditions applied.
1989
All of these were long before we ever heard of hackers.
Hence had no need to install virus protection.
Early on there was no such thing as a search engine. We'd buy monthly magazines to find web addresses.
Much has changed over the years, some of it for the worse. Webpages have become memory and graphically intensive. Annoying auto-playing videos, popups and countless ads have now become the norm. It's become so commercialized one has to wade through all the garbage to even get to why they came there in the first place. However I could have never once imagined how one day I could do nearly all my banking and shopping online using my credit card. So that's a good thing progress has given us.
Point is...
I've been around computers since nearly the beginning. I've created on my own a huge spreadsheet (complete with macros) in Excel. It gives me more information then one could imagine. It contains all my billings, checks, utility expenses and budgets since 2004. Other spread sheets are for my home inventory, car records, telephones/addresses, grocery list and a more. This computer has stored over 40,000 mp3's, family photos and gigabytes of videos and more. Over the last 30 years it's still amazes me how far computers have come. So too how inexpensive they've become.
There is a couple of things I learned over the past 30 years or so. (1) Try to avoid storing anything in "the cloud" when possible (some programs require it). (2) Backup, backup, backup. Then backup again on two other hard drives, with three different formats. (3) Ignore software that nags for updates. They are all about getting information rather then improving. If software works don't do it. If it's not broken it doesn't need fixing. I haven't updated my Windows for 3 years and have yet to have a problem. Of course some of these apps do it without your knowledge or permission anyway. (4) Hover the mouse over a link or examine it's properties before clicking. No matter what it says doesn't mean it's going there. Much like the spoofed phone ID's when getting a call. (5) Don't feed the trolls. Block them. Ignore them.
No comments:
Post a Comment
All comments are under moderation. Meaning pending approval. If comments are disrespectful or do not address this specific topic they will not be published