Computers: A Reminder of What 1995 Was Like

The newspaper was in the bottom of the cabinet. Kind of compared to when you own a parakeet and you line the bottom of the cage with newspaper to catch the bird seed and the bird poop. Same difference.

He, my hubby, had lined the cabinet with this particular group of pages.

I was curious, so I looked at the date. November 19, 1995. Now it's 2015, so this piece of paper is now 20 years old. What I got a kick out of, was the advertisement for a new Multimedia Computer and Monitor.

For what. The computer was offered for sale at Office Max. It was Office Max's everyday low price. So another words, you didn't have to jump in your car and break any speed laws getting to the store.

This computer was a breathtaking high speed 75MHz Processor. It had 8 MB of RAM. It had 850MB of hard drive. A quad speed CD-ROM drive. A 14.4 bps fax/modem. A telephone answering system with speaker phone. A 14 inch multiscan monitor was included and you could see 12.5 inches of screen when you viewed it.

What a deal!!!

In 1980 to 1982, I went to Mankato Area Vocational Technical Institute, affectionately referred to as M.A.V.T.I. by us who attended. Now, if you attend, they've shortened and sweetened the curriculum and now go by the name South Central Technical College or SCC. Still, the same stuff.

Anyways, when I attended, I was enrolled in the two year Computer Programming course. Microsoft was just a thought at that point. We had a room full of computer with a huge processor, a central monitor, card readers, disk readers, hoppers and stackers for card reading.

It was all very huge and all very regimented.

As I recall, there was a new Radio Shack computer in the Accounting room. A TRS-80. This computer was so advanced that it actually had a keyboard and a monitor and a tower with two drives. A and B.

Yeah. Thirty years later and we have the things that Bill predicted. It helps that he was in control of his predictions.

I find it amazing that the same processing that it took that computer that I learned on, in three different rooms, it's all contained in a small, wafer like phone system that you can carry around in your pocket.

And yet, you can buy things with it. You can access your bank. You can read a book. You can research stuff. You can play any game imaginable with anyone else who has access to a computer.

How cool is this? Yeah. Sometimes we forget how far we've come and take all of these changes for granted.

But we HAVE come a long way!!!

Bill Gates has a book about foreseeing vast technological horizons.

The Road Ahead is the name of the book.

I have never read it, nor have I heard of it, but you and I both know that Bill has had a heck of a run with his crop of computers. He is an amazing businessman. His multi-billion dollar computer industry kept us hopping for a lot of years.

I remember the first computer that I actually got from a friend. They were upgrading to a Windows 95 computer and their 'old' one had Navigator 3.1 on it. My brother, being a computer engineer, helped me go into the brains of this computer and remove bits and pieces of the software and we downloaded and installed Windows 95 on it.

It was amazing!