Thursday Things: Recovery Mode Edition
3 April 2025. Vol 7 No 14. By Dan McGirt. #295
Thursday Things is here! This week we take a long stroll down computer memory lane.
If you enjoy this edition, please click the heart icon in the header or at the end of the post to let me know.
To you it’s the Save icon. To my generation it was reality. Photo by Fredy Jacob on Unsplash
Rebooting
I’m still recovering from my computer issues of last week, so I am again working on my 2019 vintage backup laptop, an 11” Asus ultrathin with about 4 GB of RAM. It’s … slow. It doesn’t help that Windows Update decided to update to Windows 11 even though I told it not to. Now I have Microsoft Copilot that I didn’t ask for. This machine can barely handle having more than three browser tabs open at the same time — I don’t think it’s quite ready to support an AI assistant.
(I’m pretty sure Copilot is merely a new alias for Cortana aka Clippy. You’re not fooling anyone, Clippy.)
Anyway, instead of the usual format I’m going to ramble about my history with computers.
I’m older than both the internet and the PC, so my first experience with computers goes back to high school back in the 80s. My school had a few Apple IIe computers that were set up in a special computer lab room. Using the computers was not an everyday thing, but I would occasionally have a computer lab session and learned enough BASIC to get the computer to do simple math problems, write my name on the screen, and the like.
There was also, in another classroom, a TRS-80 with a — not making this up — tape cassette drive. This was mainly used for playing Hamurabi.
Allocate that wheat wisely!
Sometimes your reign ended poorly.
I’m sure we had Oregon Trail too, but I was much more of a Hamurabi guy.
Meanwhile, at home, my mom bought a computer to write her romance novels on. It was a Morrow, with the fancy dual 5.25" double sided drives. So it was either the MD-2 or the MD-3. The Morrow ran the CP/M operating system. The word processing program was WordStar.
To boot up the machine you had to first swap in the CP/M floppy disks to install the operating system, then swap in the floppies with WordStar on them to install that. Only then you could put in the floppy with your files on it. Every single time — which today sounds crazy. Imagine having to reinstall Windows or macOS every time you turn your computer! However, it only took a minute or so. Also, that was just how computers worked and it was amazing that we had computers at all!
Morrow, CP/M, and WordStar are all long since defunct.1
Mom upgraded computers and I got the Morrow as a hand-me-down. I took it to college, along with a dot-matrix printer. I assume my university had computers available for student use somewhere, but since I had my own, I never looked into it.
I wrote my first book, Jason Cosmo, on that machine. I still have the floppy disks. One chapter per disk.
I used part of my $3000 book advance to buy a new computer.2 It was a custom built “IBM compatible XP” running some flavor of DOS. It had both a 5.25 floppy drive and a 3.5” drive. Cutting edge stuff! I also bought a monochrome Mitsuba monitor. (I went with amber, not green. Fancy!)
This was ~1988. The anarchy of multiple different desktop or home computer brands all running different operating systems was settling into a world where IBM and DOS set the standard, with the more pricey Apple Macs for the cool kids.
Along with a new computer I switched my word processing to WordPerfect and wrote my next two book with that setup. I miss WordPerfect. “Reveal codes” was awesome.
That was my gear until 1995. I was then working in Washington, DC and lived across the street from a Best Buy, from which I bought and carried home a new Acer desk top.
I don’t remember all the specs, but it ran Windows 95 and had a built-in modem, which my previous computer lacked. The Acer came with external speakers that attached to the sides of the monitor with Velcro strips. The whole setup had black casing, so with the rounded speakers in place it looked vaguely like Mickey Mouse. Since I tend to anthropomorphize inanimate objects, I called the computer Mickey.
Mickey was the computer with which I first connected to the World Wide Web. My computer at work was internet connected, but only to Gopher, Telnet, and such. No browser, no WWW. I wasn’t even sure what those were.
I previously discussed my early history with the internet here, so we’ll stick to the hardware. I kept Mickey until retiring it sometime in the early 00s. I’ve been strictly laptops since then so — yeah, I haven’t bought a desktop system since the 1990s.
There was some overlap. I bought my first laptop in 1999 after the awkwardness of having to transport my desktop system to the beach to get a freelance writing project done by deadline. It was a Dell (either an Inspiron or a Latitude) and soon became my go-to computer. I was still getting online by dial-up, via AOL.
My first machine with Wi-Fi was an Inspiron 600m. It was December 2003. WiFi was pretty new then. Network passwords weren’t really a thing. I discovered that I could pick up the Wi-Fi from the coffee shop across the street from my apartment and eventually dropped my AOL subscription. I bought enough coffee and pastries there that I felt it was a fair exchange. I’m not a monster.
Looking at my Dell account, it appears I got replacement laptops in 2007 and 2009. The 2009 was my last Dell. Also in 2009 I bought a cute little 10-inch Asus Eee netbook as a travel computer — perfect for setting up on an airplane seatback tray!
Look at these specs:
About this item
Intel Atom Processor 1.6GHz
1GB DDR2 RAM
160GB Hard Drive
10-Inch Screen, Intel Integrated Graphics
Windows XP Home, 7 hours Battery Life
I enjoyed the Asus as my on-the-go machine. So when it was time for a new full-size laptop in 2012, I abandoned Dell and went with an Asus. And I’ve bought four more since then, as well as updating the netbook a couple of times, until they dropped that form factor. As I said, I am composing this edition of Thursday Things on the one I bought in 2019.
However, my affinity for Asus may be waning. I had a catastrophic hard drive failure last year and yet opted to buy a new Asus again. That machine is the one that failed last week, after only one year. That’s two strikes, Asus!
So my new laptop, which I’ll be setting up today while you read Thursday Things, is a Lenovo. I’ll let you know how that goes.
Okay, my computer purchasing history is probably not the most riveting read, but it does raise some thoughts worth pondering about the impermanence of the technology so many of us rely on to work and communicate. In olden times, you could buy a good typewriter, or perhaps a nice pen set, and keep it for decades. Our phones — which we didn’t call landlines, just phones — could last forever too.
But now? That software program you like and use every day and know all the tricks and shortcuts for will inevitably be “improved” until it becomes bloatware. And to add insult to injury, you can’t just buy it once and install it and keep using it — either the features get deprecated to make you buy the new version (which is why I quit using Quicken for tracking my finances) or it goes to a subscription model so you have to pay for it again and again.
Phones, computers, cars — they all get obsoleted via the software. No longer supported. No more security upgrades. No more bug fixes. You can keep it if you want — but good luck with that.
Then there all the household appliances that are unnecessarily computerized, digitized, and networked. I just need the dishwasher to wash the dishes. I don’t need it to talk to the internet. I don’t need Mr. Coffee to have a conversation with me. I don’t want my toothbrush sending scans of my teeth to China. Right?
But this ramble has gone on long enough. Enjoy your Thursday. I’ll be setting up Windows.
Got pretty keyed up there. Photo by Martin Martz on Unsplash
This week’s edition is brought to you by Dan’s Advice: Take control of your digital life.
Technology is on my mind a lot recently, including how to simplify our digital lives. I recently posted 5 Steps to Organize Your Phone Contacts for a More Efficient Digital Life.
Thank you for reading!
Please click the hearts, leave a comment, and use the share feature to send this issue to a friend who might enjoy it. See you next Thursday!
Although if you click the WordStar link above, you’ll see that SF author Robert J. Sawyer still uses WordStar somehow.
I paid about $1000 for the computer. My then girlfriend’s father built computers as a hobby and built mine at cost, which was nice of him. The other $2000 I used to start an IRA, for which present me thanks 1980s me! It’s never too soon to start saving for retirement!
My Lady recently purchased a Asus Laptop From the Fire sale at Conn's so far so good. Lenovo is her desktop home computer,I use a Lenovo Legion Go for my primary gaming device now. Great Support I paid the Extra 120$ for long term support.