Have you ever noticed how you walk into a store, buy a computer, and by the time you get it home not only has it depreciated by half, but none of the parts are in production anymore?

I was somewhere around ten when the first personal computer was produced by Apple, the IIE, you needed two 5-1/4" disks to boot up, and at least one more for every other thing you wanted to do. If you wanted to play a game, you had to switch disks every time you went into a new dungeon, out of the dungeon, into a new town, out of the town, yet all this in mind, there was something so incredible about the idea of word-processing instead of 'typing', What's frightening, is that anything related to the apple IIE is now considered "Vintage" --EEP!--

I was lucky, I managed to miss the 'typing' era of the classroom, you know, back when it was only girls because despite the feminst movement girls were still expected to either become teachers, nurses, secretaries or mothers? But I digress. Even still, the Apple was an amazing technological advancement from the very first computers, that the creators of, in Iowa and Pennsylvania, are still debating which one came first.

Those were the ones that used tubes and punch cards, and more importantly took up entire rooms, though back in the fourties, it was one heck of an accomplishment to get a computer to do simple calculations, much less a couple dozen at a time.

Of course I'd be remiss if I failed to mention the commodore 64, which ran on cartridges rather than disks, and cost (incidently) a little less than half the cost of one semester's tuition at a Canadian University that same year (which was $2,000 for an Arts Degree)

The Atari started as a game system, and that's what it is best known for, though a couple of its evolutions had word processors.

The ColecoVision (Coleco For Short) was also best known for gaming, though you could buy the Coleco Adam as an attachment for Word Processing (I had to look up the name of the word-processor)

Again, parts for these are referred to as "Vintage" (I'm SO Old!!) I've used most of these!!

Do you remember Super-Mario? Donkey Kong? Taipan? The *original* Ultima Series?

Have you ever wished you could play them again? Or, in the case of those of you who have no concept of what a 5 1/4" disk looks like, but want to know what some of these games used to be like, try an emulator.

They take a little tweaking, (But the settings are built into the software) There's nothing like having your repeat rate kill you in a dungeon because the emulator is designed for a computer that took long enough that you could walk calmly to the kitchen for a coffee before the next screen loaded.

I wouldn't try word processing on an emulator, if you can even find one, but some of the older games are worth trying. (Oh, and I looked up those links above, but didn't try any of the individual downloads)

The Two that everyone is familiar with.. Need I name them? The most modern incarnations, complete with clones, all trying to out-do, out-memory, out-small-and out-cheap the other, not always to the benefit of the customer, but it is a whole lot nicer to try to pick up a Desktop now than it was ten years ago. This one only weighs about twelve pounds, That one I could barely lift under my own power.

Let's not forget Monitors, Remember back when they couldn't double as televisions? Either literally or in size? Or when a flat-screen, or LCD monitor was unheard of? Once upon a time monitors took up half your desk-top.

We have changed from the old male/female connector, where you took your life in your hands every time you connected your keyboard with serial ports to using connectors, and then to wireless.

Honestly, I've never seen what the big deal was with the Mac/Apple Debate, but that's just me. I think all it was was that people got so used to one operating system that they couldn't handle the other.

Did you think there was only ever the Windows OS for the PC?

Then you're not ooooooooold..

Before windows there was DOS (Disk Operating System) In fact, there was a version of Windows (3.1) that was reliant on DOS to run,

Then someone invented Linux, and all of its clones and incarnations that you had to speak fluent computer to understand,

Then came OS2Warp (or OS2-Warp, I don't remember) Another operating system. All of these were either windows like, or could emulate windows, some people like them, some people don't, and some people never tried them.

When Laptops first came out, I would hardly have considered them portable, But that's my opinion They were heavy, and *large*. But now the smallest one that is still considered a laptop weighs six pounds, and has dimensions of 13 X 9 X 1.1 Stunning. And that's not considering things like the Blackberry, or the UTstarcom. I've never played on the blackberry, but the Starcom comes complete with windows, office (including outlook), internet explorer, and some windows games. It has a slide-out monitor that covers a complete QWERTY keyboard, All that and a camera phone too. All in a 2 X 4" Package. --No that wasn't a plug, I'm not even sure they make them anymore, It was a point about how small computers are getting.--