Celebrating '21 Things We Miss About Old Computers' (denofgeek.com)

"Today, we look back at the classic era of home computing that existed alongside the dreariness of business computing and the heart-pounding noise and colour of the arcades," writes the site Den of Geek. An anonymous reader reports: The article remembers the days of dial-up modems, obscure computer magazines, and the forgotten phenomenon of computer clubs. ("There was a time when if you wanted to ask a question about something computer related, or see something in action, you'd have to venture outside and into another building to go and see it.") Gamers grappled with old school controllers, games distributed on cassette tapes, low-resolution graphics and the "playground piracy" of warez boards -- when they weren't playing the original side-scrolling platformers like Mario Bros and Donkey Kong at video arcades.

In a world where people published fanzines on 16-bit computers, shared demo programs, and even played text adventures, primitive hardware may have inspired future coders, since "Old computers typically presented you with a command prompt as soon as you switched them on, meaning that they were practically begging to be programmed on." Home computers "mesmerised us, educated us, and in many cases, bankrupted us," the article remembers -- until they were replaced by more powerful hardware. "You move on, but you never fully get over your first love," it concludes -- while also adding that "what came next was pretty amazing."
Does this bring back any memories for anybody -- or provoke any wistful nostalgic for a bygone era? Either way, I really liked the way that the article ended. "The most exciting chapter of all, my geeky friends? The future!"

Comments

I miss software that works.

[mcmonkey]

Any old 8 or 16-bit software from decades past, if we have any of that software around today, it still works. And all we'd need to run it was the appropriate hardware.

Software you buy today, might not work in 6 months. It almost certainly, like 99.99% certain, won't work in decades. And if it even works today as you buy it, it only works when it can connect to some authorizing server. So we have no idea, literally no idea what is required for current software to run. You have the software, the hardware, an internet connection, and some mysterious something out there on the other end of the wire.

So what do I miss? I miss software that works.

What I miss about computing of yesteryear

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

No sonofabitch was trying to monetize my data, watch what I do on my computer or online (when there was an online to speak of), or force-feed me advertisement.

No bloatware

[edx93]

'nuff said.

BASIC

[Anonymous Coward]

I miss BASIC. Seriously. I miss the days when the built-in command prompt was so easily accessible and so easily programmed that a 6 year old child could learn how to write "Hello World" within a few seconds, and could begin exploring the computer on his own after that. (That's exactly how I started, by the way.)

Write-protect tabs

[dottrap]

I miss the hard physical write-protect tabs we had on floppy disks.

Nowadays, if you plug in a USB stick or external hard disk, you have to trust that the OS won't write or screw up your data in any way. Ignoring bugs and and "helpful" OS's who try to reformat if they don't recognize the filesystem, with viruses and other malware, you can't trust software to enforce read-only modes.