A Walk Down Amnesia Lane

Wow talk about a walk down amnesia lane for those of you who aren't old enough to remember DOS based computers than telnet is the way to go. I used my first computer for work back in 1988 and it was DOS based programs (Windows 95 hadn't even been thought of than) and the computer we had was equipped with a hard disk drive that was a massive 20Mb. The thing I had forgotten about with DOS based programs is that if you don't get the command exactly right it just wont work.

Now days in windows if you get part of the program name right it will give you all the options that it has that are similar to what you are looking for. In Telnet if you forget to put in the o for open before entering the address of the site you want than you just get a command error and no options for what you might have meant.

Also to start a program running you didn't just click on it you had to find the correct start up command and they didn't all have the same code. Some would start on "run" others on "start" and some would even start only if you typed in the name of the program.

I showed Telnet to my teenage kids and they found it a wonderful curiosity but were glad that they don't have to use it for there computer needs. My youngest who is 15 gets very upset when a game or disk doesn't start with "Auto run" and she has to go into My Computer and start it manually. It is very hard to believe how far we have come in just 20 years.

That old work computer was upgraded in 1990 and we were given 40Mb of hard drive and we got really excited at so much space. Now I have a 500GB hard drive and am considering an upgrade to meet the demand. I found an old computer book from 1993 that listed the parts and prices to build your own computer. I worked out how many parts I would need and the cost to build the computer I am using now which I paid $1200 for. It would have cost me $137,855 to build the same thing back than.

After using Telnet I went to towel.blinkenlights.nl and was both excited and disappointed at the same time. It was disappointed that the movie was Star Wars and not Star Trek, but hey that's a personal choice, but I was excited to see graphics the same as the first computer game I ever owned.

In a moment for euphoric excitement I called the kids to my desk and said look at this guys this is how my old computer games use to look. Well needless to say they weren't so excited one thought they were "cute", my son said " wow dad that's so hard core, not" and my oldest just said "yeah" and walked away.

While it was nice to walk down amnesia lane for a short period of time I ask myself would I really want to go back to this way of computing and the answer would be "NOT LIKELY". I guess that we have been to spoiled by GUI and windows and all the user friendly advantages that we now have and to go back is not an option.

I believe if we were still in DOS based computers than we would not see any where near as many computers in households today. Love or Hate Microsoft Windows it has made computing the user friendly way it is today.

So I hope that you enjoyed your walk down amnesia lane with me all of those of you who remember what it was like, and for those of you who don't remember enjoy the short experience of the way it was. Remember it is always nice to look back at where we came from but it is essential to look forward to where we are going. I wonder if in 20 years other University students will be looking at Windows based programming and wondering how we ever survived with such basic programs.