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Comment by andrewstuart | Hacker News Reader

Funny post, pining for the days of old that he never knew.

I was there and I'm glad its past.

The computers were slow.

Microsoft ruled the day, which was fine for me because I was a Microsoft fanboy back then.

The software was unsophisticated - any time you wanted to push the envelope you'd often hit some fundamental barrier because the software just wasn't there yet.

Things crashed - alot.

I own a ton of vintage computers but I don't use them, because why would you want to?

I'm certainly glad I witnessed all that first hand since 1979 but wouldn't want to go back.

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I was there too and I mostly disagree.

> The computers were slow.

Not for mundane tasks, or not a whole lot anyways. Productivity software used to be optimized for the client. Today's equivalent is cloud-based, written in managed code and often actually slower.

> Microsoft ruled the day

I do agree here, this part sucked.

> The software was unsophisticated - any time you wanted to push the envelope you'd often hit some fundamental barrier because the software just wasn't there yet.

This varies by field and task. As a developer, it was easier to break through because there were not 35,000 competing partial alternatives. Without this "value puzzle" new stuff was a much easier sell.

> Things crashed - alot.

In my particular experience, things break a little more than they used to. OS's don't crash as much, though.

> I own a ton of vintage computers but I don't use them, because why would you want to?

Same here, but only because I can emulate old platforms, otherwise I would. I still play old games and use old software I wrote.

Why own a ton of vintage computers that you don’t want to use?

Exactly.

You had Macs, Linux and Unix workstations in the 90s. And before the graphical browser era anything with a terminal program (eg Amiga) worked fine for internet related things.

Things crashed and autosave hadn’t been invented.

Things still crash and autosave saves the stuff that you want to undo later but cannot...

> Things crashed - alot.

The program has performed an illegal operation and will be shutdown.

I want today's hardware with the internet of 2012 or so.

the malware of the early 2000s was truly awful. It was auto-install or very close to that and would nearly brick the system . So glad those days are over.

At least it loudly announced itself (tough luck, you got pwned!). It is much more financially motivated and pernicious in spirit now, hiding its presence and infiltrating your entire network.

https://youtube.com/@danooct1 shows off some old malware.

> Funny post, pining for the days of old that he never knew.

Agreed. I was born in '83. The author misses the things he never even experienced and is living in the 90s-00s "Highlights" reel.

5" floppy drives. 3" hard disks. Single core computers. 28k dial-up was almost torture. 56k was not much better. Waiting 5-10 minutes for a single picture to load one. pixel. at. a. time. CRT monitors. Trojans. Viruses.

> Things crashed - alot.

Ahh, the Windows Blue Screen of Death. "hello darkness my old friend."

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