Eric wrote:
And the long-term definitely does matter here! Apple II's have at least another 20 years of life left in them. I can't say that about the Dell I'm working on now - It will be in the garbage heap within another year.
I've long found this an interesting contrast. I suppose it's similar to "classic" cars, which are viewed as having persistent (or increasing) value, while current cars are seen as only utilitarian and disposable. It seems that once an artifact passes some "impracticality" threshold it may become an object of desire. This always goes through my mind when I see a 700MHz Pentium III system being thrown out--a lot more computing capacity than any Apple II, but much less interesting to play with. ;-) Perhaps it's simply that we always have access to much better "modern" platforms that do all that the older "modern" systems do, but better, while "vintage" systems run hardware and software (and evoke emotions) that modern platforms don't. -michael NadaPong: Network game demo for Apple II computers! Home page: http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/ "The wastebasket is our most important design tool--and it's seriously underused."