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I never would have figured that I would end up becoming the sort of techie geek that I am. I had never touched a computer before I got hired at National Geographic in 1989; immediately I was hooked. I conned Dad into buying ("for the whole family") what was at that time a top of the line $3,000 model: an IBM PS/2 286 with 1 MB of RAM and a 10 MB hard drive. (oh, and a dot matrix printer, too) Before long I had discovered Prodigy, and I was on my way. Sad to say that I all but drool when new hardware or software toys appear in front of me.
I was bopping along quite happily in 2006 until I made the mistake of thinking to myself, "Wow, my laptop is 3 1/2 years old, and it's still going." Within weeks, the built-in WiFi card croaked. So, late on a Sunday night at Best Buy, I grumbled over the lack of full-sized-but-lightweight laptops and forked over some dough for a not-quite-latest and greatest new toy, an HP Pavilion dv2125nr Notebook PC, weighing in at 5.4 lbs:
- AMD Turion 64 X2
- 1 GB RAM
- DVD Player/Writer
- 100 GB HD
- Widescreen monitor (meh.)
- Everything that's now standard in a laptop (USB, Firewire, WiFi, Ethernet, modem, etc.)
My current desktop PC, bought in October 2005, is a Dimension E510 from Dell, currently running WinXP Media Center.
- Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 630 w/HT Technology (3.0GHz,800FSB)
- 1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 400MHz (4x256M)
- 160GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache™
- 16x DVD-ROM Drive
- 16x DVD+/-RW Burner
- NEC LCD1550V 15" Flat Panel Monitor AND Samsung SyncMaster 740BX 17" Flat Panel
- 256MB PCI Express™ x16 (DVI/VGA/TV-out) ATI Radeon X600 SE HyperMemory (hooked up to cable, and two monitors)
- NexStar NST350-U2 250 GB External USB Hard Drive
- SmartDisk 80 GB USB 2.0 External HD
- Integrated sound card (sound doesn't matter quite so much when your hearing is shot!)
- HP 932C Color DeskJet Printer
- Canon N670U 600x1200 USB Scanner
- Sony DCR-TRV10 Mini-DV Camcorder (PDF manual)
- Westell External DSL Modem
Computers and Geekitude Through the Ages
 While it seems that more and more laptop buyers these days seem to want to stuff as much technology as they can into a laptop and are willing to lug around 7-lb beasts, my preference was always to have a notebook that will allow me to get on the web, do basic work stuff, and play games, all in a package that won't break my notoriously fragile back. I did a lot of hunting, and was miffed to see that IBM's lightest Thinkpads are now 7 ounces heavier than they used to be (since my 3-lb Thinkpad has been the light of my life for three years), so in May 2003 I settled on a Gateway 200 Series notebook. It has built-in ethernet and wireless, uses the Pentium M chip to make the batteries last longer than 20 minutes, all in a spiffy silver case that weighs 3 lbs. It also comes with a docking station that includes a DVD player, which brings the weight up to 6.5 lbs if I feel like toting it somewhere. It was bought with traveling in mind, but between the wireless network at home and the battery life of around 2.5 hours even when using the wireless card at full-tilt, it's now freed me to wander from room to room (or out onto the patio) while never being more than a few feet from an Internet connection. (It's a disease. I admit it.)
- 1.0 GHz Pentium III M Processor
- 384 MB SDRAM
- 40 GB Ultra ATA HD
- 12.1" XGA TFT Active Matrix Screen
- 2x AGP 3D Video with 8MB VRAM
- Integrated V.92 56k modem
- Integrated 10/100 Ethernet
- Integrated 802.11b Wireless Networking
- 2 USB and 1 Firewire Port
- Docking Station with Floppy (!), 8x DVD, and more ports than you can shake a stick at
From March 2002 to October 2005 my desktop was a Pavilion 750 from Hewlett Packard.
The HP replaced my last desktop setup, a PC from Quantex (yet another PC maker no longer in business), bought for about $2500 in October 1998:
In early 2000, I got sick of lugging around my last laptop (see below), plus my mother started whining about sharing computer time with Dad, and how it would be nice to have a laptop, blah blah blah.... So I gave her my old one and bought one of the new IBM ThinkPad 240 models, which is about the size of a spiral notebook (less than one inch thick) and weighs under 3 lbs. What a great purchase! I love this little baby! It can go in my purse/bag and I hardly know it's there! It may have been upstaged by the Gateway, but I wasn't planning on letting go of it--until more whining from Mom and Dad made me hand them a functional laptop (The Man gave up, and bought his own laptop).
- Celeron 366 mHz
- 64 MB RAM
- 10.4" TFT display
- external floppy drive
- 56K V.90 Mini-PCI integrated modem
- Soundblaster-compatible sound card
- USB, VGA, PS/2, serial, parallel, and infrared ports
- Delorme Tripmate GPS Receiver
- Linksys Wireless Network Card (on loan)
In the summer of 1998, knowing that I was going to be doing some traveling, I finally broke down and bought another laptop. (My first one was also my very first computer, a 386-SX20 with a whopping 4 MB of RAM and an amazing 80 MB hard drive!). I did not want to spend a fortune, and so was relieved to find the following configuration for about $500 cheaper than most laptops those days. It went off to live with Mom and Dad, but is now stuck in a drawer somewhere (now that Mom has positioned herself as the recipient of Dad's hand-me-down PCs).
- Pentium 200 MMX
- 40 MB RAM
- 12.1" viewable display
- 20x CD (swappable)
- Floppy Drive (swappable)
- Soundblaster-compatible sound card
- 33.6 PC Card Modem
- 10 MB PC Card Network Interface Card
Then there's my old desktop PC, a Pentium 166 brought to us by the fine folks at Gateway, which I bought in about 1996. After spending a year or so as my brother's PC, this computer got sold during the Great Housecleaning of 2002.
- Pentium 166 (no, not MMX)
- 48 MB Synchronous DRAM (started with 16 MB RAM)
- Soundblaster 16 soundcard
- STB Velocity 128 (#3D) Video Card w/4 MB SGRAM
- Quantum Fireball 2.1GB HD
- Western Digital 2.1GB Caviar HD (slave)
- Boca 56 KFlex Internal Modem
- Toshiba 8X CD-ROM
I also still have a first-generation Cassiopeia, a handheld PC that runs Windows CE. Weighs under a pound, runs versions of Word, Excel, and Schedule+, and can use a PC Card modem to retrieve e-mail and surf the Web. Unfortunately, I never use it anymore, especially now that I have my full-feature ThinkPad.
There used to be a pile of discarded hardware, but as part of the Great Housecleaning of 2002 I finally decided to stop holding onto things like a parallel/serial i/o card and VLB video card. What's left is stuff that might still be of use.
- Diamond Multimedia HomeFree Phoneline Network Card
- Linksys Homelink Phoneline + 10/100 Network PC Card
- Simple Technology 33.6 kbps PC Card Modem
- Gateway/Vivitron 17" monitor
- 2 linksys etherpci lan card ii
- 4 30-pin SIMMs, 8 chips, siemens hyb511000bj-70 (9514)
- 1 72-pin SIMM, 8 chips (one side), ti -70 tms44400dj / te 62a1tk p
- 1 72-pin SIMM, 8 chips (4 each side), mm 514400n-07 / 418bh (mc 4 meg-sn72)
In May of 1994 I entered the world of Intel 486 processors, paying $2100 for this beefy system from an outfit named Comtrade:
- 486DX2 66 mhz (VLB architecture, which gave way to Pentiums about 10 minutes later)
- 8 MB RAM
- 425 MB harddrive
- 15" flat screen monitor
- 14400 modem
- CD-ROM drive
I first purchased my own computer in November, 1991; looking back, I was actually pretty ahead of the curve, opting to buy a laptop. It was a Compudyne (bought from a new-ish store called CompUSA), and for $1800 I got:
- 386SX-20 mhz processor
- 4 MB RAM
- 40 MB harddrive
I soon purchased a 1200 MB external modem so I could log onto the GeoWorks version of America Online, and to Prodigy, and to Compuserve. But before long I upgraded to the blazing Zoom 2400! I also eventually bought a 14" monitor.
I first put my hands on a computer in college in about 1985, trying out a friend's Amiga/Commadore/some such. When I started working at National Geographic in 1989, most people had desktop PCs, either the IBM ATs or (if you were lucky) an IBM PS2. It didn't take long for me to start kicking and screaming to my father that these PCs were a very important tool for professional success, and that we should have one. So for Christmas 1989 Dad spent about $3500 on the following:
- IBM PS/2 286
- 2 MB RAM
- 10 MB harddrive
- 12" monitor
- 24-pin dot-matrix printer
Other Geekitude:
We've had a nice speedy DSL connection since August of 1999 (and upgraded to 1.5 MB speed in mid-2001). We started off using the Phoneline Networking method (since our computers are about as far apart as they can be), but are now of course a Wi-Fi enabled household, using Linksys Wireless Network products; now I can wander the house (and backyard) with my laptop and be able to surf! (which may or may not be a good thing) (This allowed us to remove the 50-foot ethernet cable strung up the staircase from Bill's PC to the router in my office.)
In late 1998 I was introduced to the world of MP3s, and began the massive project of ripping thousands of MP3s mainly so that I could have all of my favorite songs available in my office (our CD collection resides downstairs). And, with a second 10GB harddrive, who cares about giving over 5 GB of space to 1900 files? I thought at the time it was the greatest personalized jukebox ever, but at Christmas 2001 it was surpassed by my Nomad Jukebox, which looks like a portable CD player but which in fact has a 6-GB hard drive, holding all my MP3s and allowing me to listen to them wherever I want (in the car, to the gym, etc.). Early 2004 brought a next-generation 30 GB Nomad Jukebox Zen NX, smaller and with a much nicer interface. And then August 2005 brought my HP iPaq Smartphone, with Windows Media Player built in, allowing me to carry along 2 GB worth of MP3s on an SD card for plenty of listening pleasure.
And, it's not technically computer-related, but it is pretty geeky, so I'll also mention that in August 1997 we became happy customers of DirecTV, which provides hundreds of TV channels via an 18-inch satellite dish. And for Christmas 1999 we took a life-altering step and bought a Tivo, which is basically a big-ass hard drive that acts like a VCR, but does so much more! There's no better way to watch TV! Get one immediately! In 2001 we even went more Tivo nuts and bought the DirecTiVo combo box, which became really fabulous in August 2001 when they enabled the second tuner, allowing the recording of two programs at once. Thinking in early 2004 that it was dying, we bought a second DirecTivo, only to find out it was just cabling trouble. So now we have three Tivos. We are nothing if not plugged in....
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