Alan
12-02-2004, 15:07
I am taking a leaf out of Moira’s book. Although she has been on the boards for a few months, she decided to make a thread in this forum. As she says, it’s good to have an idea of who you are talking to.
Some two thousand posts late, here’s my story!
Married 25 years this May, two teenagers, (theirs is Rig 2 below) I am a Surveyor within the Construction Industry and an avid supporter and graduate of, the Open University (General Computer Science degree concentrating on database design).
My first computer programme was written on punch cards on a DEC PDP 8 at Glasgow College of Building (1973), I first went on-line in 1982 with my Tandy TRS80 Model III, (Lechumbl should remember them!) connected to the O.U. PDP 11 in Milton Keynes and a couple more in the States.
My first working exposure to computers in the work place was in 1983 when I joined a Quantity Surveying practice which had a PDP 11 serving what we’d now call thin clients and a word processor was a computer dedicated only to that work (I forget their name, they used to be big but now are gone) and each one cost £9,000 !! The company spent huge amounts on custom Surveying software because none was available commercially.
I bought my first Windows PC in 1991 and thought Windows 3 was magic in comparison with DOS. Over the years with different versions of Windows, Office, and hardware, I have seen no particular increase in speed of standard Office type applications. It takes as long to scroll down a ten page Word document using the down arrow key today, as it did with Word Version 2 running in a 386 with Windows 3.0 !
Where the advance in kit does help, is in graphics intensive stuff whether games or productive work. There is a hoooge improvement there.
I like guitars, Hi-Fis, cars, all the usual male hype stuff and I’m dreading Valentine’s Day because I am bound to choose the wrong colour of flower!
Some two thousand posts late, here’s my story!
Married 25 years this May, two teenagers, (theirs is Rig 2 below) I am a Surveyor within the Construction Industry and an avid supporter and graduate of, the Open University (General Computer Science degree concentrating on database design).
My first computer programme was written on punch cards on a DEC PDP 8 at Glasgow College of Building (1973), I first went on-line in 1982 with my Tandy TRS80 Model III, (Lechumbl should remember them!) connected to the O.U. PDP 11 in Milton Keynes and a couple more in the States.
My first working exposure to computers in the work place was in 1983 when I joined a Quantity Surveying practice which had a PDP 11 serving what we’d now call thin clients and a word processor was a computer dedicated only to that work (I forget their name, they used to be big but now are gone) and each one cost £9,000 !! The company spent huge amounts on custom Surveying software because none was available commercially.
I bought my first Windows PC in 1991 and thought Windows 3 was magic in comparison with DOS. Over the years with different versions of Windows, Office, and hardware, I have seen no particular increase in speed of standard Office type applications. It takes as long to scroll down a ten page Word document using the down arrow key today, as it did with Word Version 2 running in a 386 with Windows 3.0 !
Where the advance in kit does help, is in graphics intensive stuff whether games or productive work. There is a hoooge improvement there.
I like guitars, Hi-Fis, cars, all the usual male hype stuff and I’m dreading Valentine’s Day because I am bound to choose the wrong colour of flower!