On Fri, 29 Apr 2011, Michael J. Mahon wrote:
datajerk wrote:On Apr 29, 4:29 pm, Robert Boucher <bouch...@alumni.texas.net> wrote:In article <dog_cow-1304098...@macgui.com>, dog_...@macgui.com (D Finnigan) wrote: I have used my IIe since I first got it to keep: 1. Medical records 2. Daily expenses 3. Auto records with automatic notice of various maintenance needs 4. Stock purchases 5. Weekly tracking of mutual funds 6. Daily rain amounts for many years (use a relative DB to average the daily rates per year and compare to the current amount 7. Bike mileage with several running averages 8. Total expenses on my house 9. Possessions (date, location, price,etc) 10. several others, but you get the idea. I use mainly DB's and a lot of macros.That'd make you a "user"--a rare breed.Rarer now, but I expect that most of us "old-timers" were once users, too. Appleworks was hugely popular, and was almost entirely for "users". In the beginning, buying an expensive computer seemed to require some practical justification. ;-)
It would depend on what time you are referring to.I wanted a computer in 1969, I had no use for it and that predates the home computer field by at least five years. I wanted one more badly in late 1974 when the Altair 8800 was on the cover of Popular Electronics, buf couldn't afford it. I finally got one in 1979, a KIM-1. The only thing I could use that for was to have a computer, to play with. So I learned to program in 6502 assembly language (and hand assemblying it).
My second computer, an OSI Superboard, had a video interface and a full ascii keyboard, and a whopping 8k of RAM, but still used a cassette interface. I could do more with it, but I still didn't use it for anything "practical".
My third computer, a Radio Shack Color Computer, I got in 1984 and that time I got a floppy drive, so I did use it for word processing, complete with a Smith Corona daisy wheel printer that took forever to print a page and exploded with each character typed.
Before 1984, I couldn't afford something that would actually be practical. By 1984 I could, but that was also made easier because computers had gotten better, and prices come down. In order to have a full blown system earlier that would do something useful, I'd have had to have some really good reason. Replacing a typewriter wasn't, not then.
I'm the odd one that lusted after an Apple II when it came out, but couldn't afford it, so made do with the OSI Superboard. And when I did get an Apple II (a real one, someone I knew gave it to me) it wsa about 1990, and I never had the desire to spend the time to get good at it, especially not when I wasn't going to use it as a main computer. So I've barely turned it on. I got a IIGS at a school rummage sale a few years later, and havent' done anything but play with the monitor on that. It's an odd thing because if you wait long enough, you can get those things you lusted after at a low price, but by then it was too late. I have an Amiga 500, I had an Apple III for a while, I had a Mac 512KE for a bit, and by the time I got them all cheap, the only interest was to collect them.
Part of it is that I'm not going to use them as a main computer, so they wouldn't get the attention I would give a main computer. But I suspect it's also about getting older. I wsa fifteen when the Altair hit, I could get endless magazines for very little cover price, and I'd buy so many and read up on so much. And get the pertinent books. Now there just seems lots of other things to do, so if I get good at the IIGS, it takes time away from other things.
Michael