Here's another batch of readers' early computer memories:
We were using the Atari 800 to play our text-based games around 1980. We had to type in many of the games and save them to cassette. To play them, you had to play the cassette back in and hope that it didn't error out. Sometimes it would take 20 to 30 minutes to load a game. Some of my favorites were B-2 Bomber and Telengard. I Learned DOS Basic on a TRS-80 in 1983 and in 1985 bought a Tandy 1000, which I upgraded the memory to 640k. It was blazing.
-Jim
My first PC was purchased for our business around 1981. It was an Altos Z-80 based machine with an 8" floppy and a 10 MB hard disk. It ran M/PM, the multi-user version of C/PM, and we had WordStar, CalcStar and dBase II. We bought a couple of monitors, a Diable 630 daisy wheel printer and 300 bps modem to go with it. The entire package was almost $10,000. I learned to use the programs from the manuals in the three-ring binders that came with the software. It was a great machine and far superior to the IBM PCs and PC-DOS that would appear a few years later.
-Brent
We started with TRS-80s (called them Trash 80s) in class in the early '80s, then quickly moved to Apple IIs. Used those for all four years of high school.
-Amy
The first computer I worked on was an IBM 360-30 (mainframe). It was the computer we used at my college (1971). I learned Assembler, RPG and COBOL on it.
The first personal computer I dabbled with was the old Timex/Sinclair 1000, which I think I got in '81 or '82. I remember I had to hook it up to the television for a monitor and I had a cassette tape 'storage system.' Couldn't afford the printer though. Didn't do much with it since it couldn't do much and wasn't easy to use. I didn't touch PCs again until the Packard Bell I bought from Sears in 1992.
-Jim
I had a Radio Shack TRS-80 Pocket Computer that I programmed with in BASIC. It had a cassette recorder/player for storage and a tiny little thermal printer.
I then got a TRS-80 Color Computer (CoCo), again, with cassette tape storage. This one I programmed with the CoCo Assembler, and BASIC.
-Skip
My first computer was a TRS-80. I was around 13 or 14 and read all the computer magazines I could find. A friend of my dad's heard that I was interested in computers and had a TRS-80 that didn't work so he gave it to me with printer and desk. Took up most of my room and although I was pretty good a fixing things I never could get it to work.
Another friend of my dad's heard I was interested in computers and gave me a IBM XT. It was in parts and it was a lot of fun to put together. And to my surprise it actually worked (well, at least enough to boot into basic). The hard drive (10MB as I recall) didn't work so I couldn't use it. But every time I started it I was able to get into basic (perhaps it was burnt onto a ROM). Returning to my computer magazines I would spend hours typing in basic programs and then when I switched it off I lost everything.
I saved up some money from doing odd jobs and bought an Atari 130XE with printer and dual floppies -- the works. I don't really recall why I bought an Atari. I think it was because it was the first computer in my price range listed in the classified ads. I lucked out and a friend of my brother's had a lot of Atari software as he had been into Atari computers. I started writing school papers on the computer, learned basic a little better and mostly played games.
My dad started to see that I was interested in computers and it wasn't just a fad. When I was 14 he asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up. I said I want to work in computers (wasn't sure what area of computers). So a few years later my dad bought me my first real (and new) computer. A PC with a 486DX-66 processor and 16MB of ram (don't recall HD size). I had specked the machine to do desktop publishing and set out to master CorelDraw 4 (should have picked Adobe). Before long I had just about every issue one could think of and I had fixed most of them myself. Soon I was the neighborhood PC kid helping train users and fix computers. Now, 15 years later, I'm an IT professional and still love what I do.
-Matthew
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Posted by Doug Barney on 08/22/2011 at 1:18 PM0 comments
I know it sounds crazy, but a software company claims most computer problems are not really the fault of computers, and especially the software that drives them. Instead, people and the processes we use are to blame.
And it is not just Microsoft execs saying this -- the company has research on its side in the form of a poll of Redmond customers.
Some 80 percent of problems that make computers go down are our, I mean yours, I mean human's fault -- which means if we were smarter these things would never happen in the first place.
I've done plenty of dumb things with computers, but looking back, the software always allowed me to carry out the action -- and often poor design led me to my mistakes.
Is this research self-serving or are computers smart and people dumb? You tell me at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 08/22/2011 at 1:18 PM8 comments
Last week Office 365 want down for only three or so hours. But that is nearly half a work day (at least back when we all only worked eight hours). Microsoft feels Office 365 customers' pain and is kicking back 25 percent of the August bill.
That seems, on the surface, generous, but some simple math tells a different story. Small customers pay $72 a user per year. Divide by 12 and you get $6 a month. Twenty-five percent of that is a dollar and a half. Would you be happy saving $1.50 for having your users offline for 3 hours? If so, those workers need to be fired tout de suite.
What is your take? Does my fifth-grade math make sense or do your greater skills tell a different story? You tell me at [email protected].
Also, if you have cloud services, how did you adjust your WAN to handle the traffic and keep performance up? Answers to those also welcome at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 08/22/2011 at 1:18 PM5 comments
As someone who recently hosed a virus on my Win 7 laptop, I was surprised to hear that Windows is no longer largely threatened by malware.
Anti-malware maker Kaspersky (say that three times fast) now says Microsoft is no longer on the top-ten list of vulnerable companies. Windows 7 and automatic updates are the key Microsoft barriers to malware infestation, the company says.
It's security record even has third-party security experts fawning. "Microsoft's security process is spectacular," said security guru Chris Paget. "Security is a process, not a product. It evolves. The question is, 'Was Vista secure?' Microsoft has a very bad reputation for security and it is very much undeserved."
So who got knocked the worst? Oracle and Adobe (with Flash), to name just two.
While Microsoft got high marks, malware is circulating that turns off Windows UAC.
Posted by Doug Barney on 08/19/2011 at 1:18 PM1 comments
Compaq was the company that in the '80s defined what PC compatible computing was all about, and the first to release a reliable 386-based computer -- something that was sorely needed if one was to run Windows with performance quicker than frozen molasses.
Compaq and Digital Equipment later merged, only to be bought by HP.
More recently HP bought Palm, the pioneer in handheld Personal Information Managers (PIM), which was the antecedent of the smartphone.
Now both legacies are imperiled as HP is considering spinning off its PC business and dumping its tablets that are based on the Palm webOS.
This is as much an affront to history as when IBM sold its PC biz to Lenovo. What's next? Microsoft ditching operating systems?
What are your fondest IBM, Compaq or DEC memories? Rack your brain and e-mail what you find to [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 08/19/2011 at 1:18 PM3 comments
Readers share how they go about installing Microsoft' monthly updates:
We support small business clients so massive and expensive that testing isn't justified. I almost always wait for at least 24 hours before installing the updates on even my personal PC. After using myself as a 'crash test dummy,' I then install them on our office systems. If things are still looking good after that I'll allow WSUS to install them at my clients' systems.
I figure letting somebody else do the initial "beta" testing is a good plan!
-Dennis
Servers: The day after updates are released. (Except for some major updates to Exchange/SQL Server/etc. That require more planning.)
Test Group: The day updates are released.
All others: Six to seven days after the test group have been updated.
We do look at each update in depth prior to deployment but look at ALL of them as mandatory as they almost always fix a specific vulnerability. We have approximately 700 computers/servers to update.
-Stephen
Do we test every patch? No. With hundreds of Windows Servers and thousands of Windows workstations, it would be impractical (if not impossible) to test every patch in every configuration.
We use a 'layered' approach:
- We deploy patches monthly, giving a few days for Microsoft and others to see if any patches cause problems.
- Then we deploy on a handful of servers/workstations deemed 'not critical' and monitor irregularities.
- A day or so later we deploy to the general population of servers/workstations, but not to any server/workstation deemed ‘critical.'
- A day or so after that we deploy on critical servers and workstations.
For us, this is usually a three-day process and we haven't had any major issues in the many years we've employed this method.
We use WSUS and divide our computers into three categories (non-critical, general and critical) and set each category to deploy patches at the different times so we can stop and/or rollback if we see any issues. We typically do this over a weekend to avoid production hours.
Of course if there is a really critical patch that needs to go out immediately, we circumvent this process and test before we deploy.
-Dennis
We have 5,000 PCs and 250 servers to patch. If the online community is not filled with horror stories by the Thursday following Patch Tuesday we release them all to our environment via WSUS.
-Niall
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Posted by Doug Barney on 08/19/2011 at 1:18 PM1 comments
Windows may be getting better at stopping malware, but unfortunately there is more malware to stop -- at least in hidden in e-mail messages.
M86 Security says this month has been particularly bad for this particular form of malware. In fact, spam-borne malware is the worst it's been in two years, the company says.
Like any good criminal organization, cybercriminal syndicates are rebuilding after taking a few beatings from law enforcement. Now they are working overtime to build bigger botnets and sell chumps fake security software.
When was the last time you got hit with malware? Spill the beans at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 08/19/2011 at 1:18 PM1 comments
Microsoft was relatively open with Windows 7, in particular through the "Engineering Windows 7" blog, which gave the public a detailed look at UI and core infrastructure designs and issues. I'm not sure if it was too late in the process to make key design changes, but at least the blog gave IT a chance to chime in.
Now the same thing is happening with Windows 8, which now has its own "Building Windows 8" blog. The very first entry was written by Steven Sinofsky, who led Win 7 development and now leads Win 8.
Sinofsky is still being a bit coy and is not willing to give out all the details he has clear access to. For instance, he's not sharing exactly what level of hardware will be needed for Win 8, and what percentage of older apps will still run on it. He did, however, say the goal is for the new OS to run on existing hardware and run existing apps -- just don't take that as a promise that it will.
Next month Microsoft is having its Build Conference, formerly the Professional Developers Conference. Programmers may actually get some working code to play with -- stay tuned for way more details.
I'll keep you posted.
Posted by Doug Barney on 08/17/2011 at 1:18 PM1 comments
NSS Labs' latest security analysis of browsers indicates that IE 9 is safer than all other browsers when it comes to blocking social engineering-based hacks. These are the hacks where end-users see something enticing, say in an e-mail, click and are struck by malware.
According to NSS, IE 9 blocks more than 99 percent of these attacks.
Other browsers results were grim, with Safari stopping about 6 percent, Firefox 7.6 percent and Chrome 13.2 percent.
For years Microsoft has funded research, with past versions of these particular tests being paid for, at least in part, by Redmond. This latest test apparently got no vendor funding.
Last year Google blasted an earlier test, claiming it was overly limited in scope and used an out-of-date version of Chrome.
What your take on all of this? Share your opinion by writing to [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 08/17/2011 at 1:18 PM1 comments
Readers share their first PC memories:
In elementary school, I snuck into the library as often as I could to play with the Apple computer there. I honestly don't remember the model. My junior high school was in the stone age -- it didn't have anything there.
I went to high school from '84 to '87, and our school got a brand new IBM PC lab during my first year. I didn't realize how very lucky I was to learn on what would become the industry standard! I spent all four years of high school either taking classes on the IBM PCs in that lab or as a teaches aid -- anything I could do to spend time on those machines. I learned Basic, and Pascal, as well as (of course) DOS. There was lots of other stuff I picked up too, like Wordperfect and MS Word.
I begged my parents to buy me an IBM PC but my parents were worried that it would just be an expensive toy that I would get bored with. So my parents went to the clearance rack at Radio Shack and bought me a discontinued TRS-80 MC-10. It was basically a knock off of the Timex Sinclair. They told me if I really used it then they may someday buy me an IBM.
I spent hundreds of hours playing with that silly little RadioShack computer. I wrote my own games for both my little MC-10 and also for the IBMs at school. I learned so much off that horrible little box. After a little over a year of solid (almost nonstop) pounding on that MC-10, my parents realized that I had a genuine interest and bought me a used IBM PC for just under two grand -- a small fortune at the time. It was fantastic machine, much better than the ones at school. It came with 256k ram and had CGA color. The ones at school were standard monochrome, not even the enhanced Hercules monochrome.
IBM had a factory in town so many of my friends had folks that had IBM PCs at home. Through those friends I came in contact with all sorts of software -- from games like MS Flight Simulator, Midnight Mission Pinball, Zork, Gato, to business software like Wordstar and Supercalc. I remember my friends and I hearing about a guy that had something called CAD software, so we drove across town to play with AutoCAD for an evening. It was a weird way to have fun, but it worked for us!
Over the last years of high school and the couple of years after, I spent countless hours learning all I could about my little IBM PC. I even started souping it up, like one would a car. I added a 300-baud modem, upgraded the ram (which back then involved expansion cards, dip switches and dozens of individual little chips) and even replaced the stock Intel 8088 processor with a NEC V20 processor that ran like 30 percent faster. Eventually I worked my way up to buying my first hard drive. It was a 10mb ½ height RLL drive, which I paid $300 for.
Thinking about it now, I kinda miss those days, when the insides were incredibly complicated and only a relatively small community of folks really knew how to work on them.
- Dennis
In 5 words: Tandy 600; HP 110 Portable.
Both were battery-operated portables running off NiCads, and were capable of running 12 hours or more between recharges (thus putting just about any recent notebook to shame).
Both ran something kin to DOS 2 and MS Works 1.1 or so, and had proprietary 3.5" disk formats (non-standard media bytes, and worse -- each differed from standard DOS floppy format in numerous ways).
-Fred
I'll date myself as well! My first PC was an Apple II+ with two 5.25 inch floppies! Got started with it back in the summer of 1982 after I finished grad school. I was working for the U.S. Forest Service in Research Triangle Park, N.C., and I wrote a program to do financial analysis of Forest Management scenarios. The program ran on one floppy, and you could save your data on the second!
Oops, I just used up too much space to fit on one of those 5 ¼'s!
-Ron
My first computer WAS an IBM-PC. I bought it barebones, with no floppy drives, which I installed later myself. Bought my own monitor with yellow pixels instead of the standard green. Still had it in 1990 when I took it half way around the world and back and installed my first dial-up modem. Funny, I can't remember if I ever put in a hard drive. Sigh, all those floppies, all those viruses...
-Mike
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Posted by Doug Barney on 08/17/2011 at 1:18 PM4 comments
Microsoft is used to majority share, something it enjoys with Windows, Office, IE, and Exchange (and the Xbox brand is moving in that direction).
Unfortunately such is not the case with Windows Phones. Here's the bad news from Gartner: Windows Phones has a measly 1.6 percent market share -- even less than the 4.9 percent market share it had last year. Android is the leader with 43.4 percent. That could well go up with Google's $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility, the company's mobile device division.
Posted by Doug Barney on 08/17/2011 at 1:18 PM2 comments
Here are some thoughts on what a more dominant Apple-centric enterprise environment would mean to you:
I have both windows and Mac systems. They are so similar to each other now, it's almost irrelevant what would be easier or better. It's just a matter of taste. The one thing which Mac has with OS X lion now that is a useful professional tool over Windows is the new mail client. It's brilliant, as I could connect to an Exchange server account in a snap. Also, the out of the box apps are quality. Ical rules. However the Mac version of Office sucks. But no problem, just install Windows boot camp and run office 2010 VIA virtuals. But apart from that, I still prefer Windows for various fine tuned networking things.
-Anonymous
If Macs became the enterprise standard, my new saying would be, 'Would you like fries with that?'
- Michael
I think you might be right that Microsoft will continue to dominate the corporate environment, at least in the near future. That's largely due, IMO, to the large investment in existing applications. The pace at which Mac devices are being adopted in the consumer space supports the argument that there's nothing really driving Windows' dominance anymore other than price -- PCs are still cheaper. Applications are plentiful for non-Windows platforms these days, which wasn't the case in prior decades.
I think there are two ways that the current PC dominance could change rather dramatically: 1) more applications transition to Web interfaces built around HTML standards (i.e. not Active X or some other proprietary implementation), 2) BYOD (bring your own device) making inroads into large shops.
In the case of the first scenario, where applications transition from thick client to browser, more apps can and likely will transition to Web interfaces, displacing the need for a Windows-only solution at the desktop. Any industry-compliant browser running on any platform will suffice. But that won't be the case for all applications. In a corporate environment, there will continue to be legacy Windows-based applications. Terminal emulation software exists for both Windows and Mac, so the workhorse mainframe platforms aren't an issue.
In the case of the second scenario, where employees choose their own computing platform, this could change corporate environments dramatically in a hurry (within three years). Many corporations are looking at ways to reduce costs and provide more flexibility when it comes to computing platforms. From an information security standpoint, they're also looking for ways to limit information leakage. To these ends, hosted virtual desktops that remain securely within the datacenter achieve all these goals. They allow for a Windows platform to host legacy applications virtually, via thin clients on Macs, iPads or other tablet devices (i.e. whatever the consumer chooses), and they prevent data leakage if the device is stolen (data remains in the datacenter). In this scenario, it's Intel, HP and Dell that would be most directly affected, as Windows licenses would still be needed for the virtual environment. Think about the administrative implications... no multitudes of hardware configurations to manage, just a virtual platform and the applications to configure.
-Scott
Share your thoughts with the editors of this newsletter! Write to [email protected]. Letters printed in this newsletter may be edited for length and clarity, and will be credited by first name only (we do NOT print last names or e-mail addresses).
Posted by Doug Barney on 08/15/2011 at 1:18 PM2 comments