Just for the fun of it, I posted an article online comparing my vintage IBM Portable, model 5155, to Apple's latest iPad model, the Retina. (The blog post is here: http://www.truthalyzer.com/?p=3454)
Here's the text without photos:
Sometimes you have to go backward to progress
I was tempted to buy a 2012 Apple Retina iPad, for $500. Instead, I bought a 1984 IBM Portable, for $80. I am typing this blog post on the portable, which should really be called a luggable, since it weighs 30 pounds, compared to the iPad's 1.44 pounds. IBM has long since gotten out of the personal computer business, and Central Point, the company that made the word processing program I'm using, is long-defunct. The hardware still works fine. I love the solid feel of its clickety clackety keyboard and the warm glow of its 9 inch amber CRT screen. And although the ancient software doesn't have any where near the multiplicity of features of more sophisticated contemporary word processing programs, it has all the features I actually need -- word wrap, tabs, cut-copy-paste, spellcheck, find-replace, and autosave.
The IBM's monochrome monitor is uncluttered, displaying up to 25 lines of 80 orange characters well-defined against a black background. The iPad's 9.7 inch LED displays an amazing 3.14 million colorful pixels, but that's overkill for typing a blog post, if you can call tapping on the iPad's virtual keyboard typing. And that keyboard takes up so much space on the screen that only half as much text is visible, compared to the old IBM. This is progress?
IBM provided 256KB of memory on the portable's motherboard, and a previous owner thoughtfully added another 256KB on a card, for a total of 512KB. Half a megabyte may not seem like much memory, but it's plenty enough to hold the operating system, word processing program, and blog post, the latter of which is saved to a 360KB floppy diskette. The least expensive iPad comes with 16GB of memory/storage. If I had bought that one and later decided to add memory, I'd be out of luck, because it's not upgradable. In fact, it's not even repairable. I could (but I never would) replace the motherboard on the old portable and install an i7 CPU, 16GB of memory, 3TB of storage, and a graphics card hooked up to a retina-like display. But the iPad, a slab of glued and soldered layers of components, is what it is, until something fails. Then it's garbage.
Of course, I need a modern computer to get on the internet, login to truthalyzer.com, and add my post and photos, and you need one to visit the site, which looks great on the iPad's razor-sharp display. And there are a lot of uses for computers for which every successive generation of progress in computer hardware and software technology is highly anticipated and gratefully utilized. But when it comes to composing for a blog, or a homework assignment, or a presidential address, has the latest incarnation of Microsoft Word really improved our ability to get our thoughts on the page (or the screen, or the teleprompter)? I think the megapixels of colorful ribbons and icons and buttons and menus and features and options filling up screens exemplify the illusion of progress. In reality, they just complicate things. Perhaps you have noticed, as I have, the proliferation of alternative word processors in recent years -- minimalist, unobtrusive -- like WriteMonkey, OmmWriter Dana, WriteRoom, and iA Writer. More and more writers, frustrated by the increasing complexity and distractions of word processing technology, are turning away, going back to the basics.
Not many have gone as far back to basics as I have, on my circa 1980's hardware and software, but perhaps they're not as committed to recycling as I am.
Here's the text without photos:
Sometimes you have to go backward to progress
I was tempted to buy a 2012 Apple Retina iPad, for $500. Instead, I bought a 1984 IBM Portable, for $80. I am typing this blog post on the portable, which should really be called a luggable, since it weighs 30 pounds, compared to the iPad's 1.44 pounds. IBM has long since gotten out of the personal computer business, and Central Point, the company that made the word processing program I'm using, is long-defunct. The hardware still works fine. I love the solid feel of its clickety clackety keyboard and the warm glow of its 9 inch amber CRT screen. And although the ancient software doesn't have any where near the multiplicity of features of more sophisticated contemporary word processing programs, it has all the features I actually need -- word wrap, tabs, cut-copy-paste, spellcheck, find-replace, and autosave.
The IBM's monochrome monitor is uncluttered, displaying up to 25 lines of 80 orange characters well-defined against a black background. The iPad's 9.7 inch LED displays an amazing 3.14 million colorful pixels, but that's overkill for typing a blog post, if you can call tapping on the iPad's virtual keyboard typing. And that keyboard takes up so much space on the screen that only half as much text is visible, compared to the old IBM. This is progress?
IBM provided 256KB of memory on the portable's motherboard, and a previous owner thoughtfully added another 256KB on a card, for a total of 512KB. Half a megabyte may not seem like much memory, but it's plenty enough to hold the operating system, word processing program, and blog post, the latter of which is saved to a 360KB floppy diskette. The least expensive iPad comes with 16GB of memory/storage. If I had bought that one and later decided to add memory, I'd be out of luck, because it's not upgradable. In fact, it's not even repairable. I could (but I never would) replace the motherboard on the old portable and install an i7 CPU, 16GB of memory, 3TB of storage, and a graphics card hooked up to a retina-like display. But the iPad, a slab of glued and soldered layers of components, is what it is, until something fails. Then it's garbage.
Of course, I need a modern computer to get on the internet, login to truthalyzer.com, and add my post and photos, and you need one to visit the site, which looks great on the iPad's razor-sharp display. And there are a lot of uses for computers for which every successive generation of progress in computer hardware and software technology is highly anticipated and gratefully utilized. But when it comes to composing for a blog, or a homework assignment, or a presidential address, has the latest incarnation of Microsoft Word really improved our ability to get our thoughts on the page (or the screen, or the teleprompter)? I think the megapixels of colorful ribbons and icons and buttons and menus and features and options filling up screens exemplify the illusion of progress. In reality, they just complicate things. Perhaps you have noticed, as I have, the proliferation of alternative word processors in recent years -- minimalist, unobtrusive -- like WriteMonkey, OmmWriter Dana, WriteRoom, and iA Writer. More and more writers, frustrated by the increasing complexity and distractions of word processing technology, are turning away, going back to the basics.
Not many have gone as far back to basics as I have, on my circa 1980's hardware and software, but perhaps they're not as committed to recycling as I am.
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I'm with you. Drop the primitive technology and use the appropriate tool - in this case a 5155.