OT: Man are modern PC's FAST or what?!?

[David Hodgkins]

A little background...

I've been involved in IT since 1992. When I first started in IT I worked for a business that had a dual core mainframe that took up 400 sq ft and demanded a 10-ton AC unit and raised floors. It had tape drives and two 5 MASSIVE 15 MB disk drives. I was "cutting edge" and pushed for a new client-server network to replace the mainframe. It took me 2 years to get the OK to install the first Novell 3.11 network. The boss told me if it doesn't work your fired!

Email was new tech and only the biggest companies had them. I proposed and built a Client/server network that included 265GB of network storage that cost me $22,000 in parts just to
build! We completed the migration off the mainframe and the new tech along with a new MIS syste I designed helped thrust the company from 5MM to 26 MM in 6 years.

Fast forward to today. My Development laptop took a dump and I bought a new laptop.

This thing has a 512GB SSD drive, which if you're not in the know offers speed 10x an standard disk drive. AND 2X the storage I paid $22K for in 1996. The processor is a 8th gen I7 quad-core. In other words, I paid $1500 for a PC that I couldn't even get close to for $30K in my early career! Amazing.

Now I'm doing advanced analytics and machine learning. Insane.

Are you as amazed by the continued tech progress as I am?

:)

[Papa]

Dave,

My first exposure to "high-end" computing devices was in 1983 when I joined the Army. The computer I was using then was programmed using rolls of perforated cardboard tape. I bought my first personal computer in 1984. It used a standard cassette recorder/player to load software into its massive 16 kilobytes of RAM. The PC I'm typing this on now is a dual quad core I7 with 16GB of RAM and a 2TB hard drive that cost less than $1,000 with the 27" LED monitor. Although Moore's law hasn't really kept up the past few years, I'm not complaining about the affordable technology we have at our fingertips today.

Dave

[Bob-STL]

Are you as amazed by the continued tech progress as I am?

:)

Yes.
In 1972, I was punching cards to run a program.
In 1976, we were discussing bioengineering human beings in grad school(seemed far-fetched then).
In 1980's, brokers talked about "watching the tape".
In 1990, I sold PC's to help analyze drugs, medicine, etc.
In 2000, I relented and agreed to a cell phone.
In 2000, I blew up a portfolio in the tech collapse.
Today, evolution of tech and biotech have continued such that it is difficult to stay abreast with anything more than the concepts.
Last night, I had to have my son help me transfer coupe pics onto a USB drive in a new laptop!
-Bob

[Big Blocker]

Dave,

My timeline looks a little like Bob-STL's . . . early 70's, punching and sorting punch cards for Chevron's main frame, running on tape reels for storage. Can you say; Univac ??
80's and 90's worked on energy management systems for large hospitals and business offices . . . no tape, but dedicated rooms filled with refrigerator sized hard drives and a bazillion miles of wire under the floor.
2000 - 2010 worked on computer graphics with [at the time] very limited colors and dimensions. No where near what todays 3D graphics can render.
I now carry around more storage and processing power on my hip (a cell phone) then I could possibly imagine back in the early days of computers.
Gotta love technology . . . FWIW, modern cars have more lines of code then a 747, go figure.

Doc

[flynntuna]

Boy, it's amazing right. I got a love-hate relationship with "tech", I remember in high school researching for a paper, going to the card catalog looking for a book going to the racks pull the book, find something in the book that takes you back to the card catalog ect ect ect. I remember thinking wouldn't it be great to have something that would take you from some reference of one book to another book without the hassle of going to the card catalog over and over. Fast forward 40+years
and here we are in the internet. Love it. Now I have tantrum when my iPad gives me problems. Hate it. Lol

[Dragonfire]

I had a friend in the army (1968) he worked on the Saturn Project at Cape Canaveral. One of his jobs was to monitor the computer. Two buildings of computer. He walked up and down the halls replacing bad cards. We now have more power in our desktop computer than was in those two buildings. More power in the desktop than we had when we sent a man to the moon. Almost unbelievable.

[Ray]

My first computer when I got on the CHP.....75659

Ray

[UnhipPopano]

In 1974 my High School English teacher laughed her back end off when I told her one day I would have my own computer and it not only would print my papers, but would also check my spelling. In 1979 the head of the Science Department of my college told me that PCs were a fad and would never be used by companies. In 1982 when I recommended to an Engineering manager, that our engineering group should purchase a new IBM PC with Display Write, he laughed and told me that you can not BS a BS artist.

If you want to see how far we have come, check out IOT [http://internetofthingsagenda.techtarget.com/definition/Internet-of-Things-IoT]

[AZPete]

It's not only amazing to you tech guys. . .
To produce a magazine ad in the late 1970s/early 1980s, I had to send the wording out to get typeset, then key-lined. Photos had to be developed, then sent out for 4-color separation ($1,000 each). Artwork was then pasted up with the key-lined type on a camera-ready board. All this was sent to the printer by courier or overnight FedEx. It took about 3 weeks and $3,000 or more.

Now, I can easily do all of this on a lap top from anywhere and send it anywhere. It takes me an hour or so, at zero cost.

But, my neighbor insists that everything was better back then. :D

[turbomacncheese]

Man, you guys are making me feel GREAT! My school was a big deal because they put an Apple 2 (that's right, 1) in every classroom. 3.5 inch floppies were already common. A decent computer would let you type up a crappy document to print out on a dot matrix printer, compose a rudimentary spreadsheet, and play video games on part with early Atari. People around me used to argue that you couldn't do enough with them to make them worth as much as a cars. Now I think about all the stuff I can do with my phone...every one of those things - way better, and 10,000 times more. When I was 10 (late 80s), I was upset that I missed out on the 50s; drive ins all over the place, parents not worried about you disappearing all day, muscle cars. These days, though, I think I got a pretty good deal.

[AC Bill]

Great advance's made in deciphering Alien technology, just the last few years, and putting it to good use..:p

[sbhunter]

My first planter “monitor” in the early 80’s was a metal box with a light for each row that blinked when a seed passed by it. If it stopped blinking, you got off the open tractor and checked the row. It was a big improvement over just hoping it was planting. Now I create variable rate planting maps in my office that stream to my planter. It varies the population by the row as the soil changes and creates an as planted map on my iPad in the cab as I go which streams back to my office computer also. And now if my AC quits working in the tractor I have to quit for the day.

[Just puttering]

Wow an apple in each class room, we couldnt have apples we had 4 commodore ??? With the monotone green monitor for the whole school. Although there were only 10 or 20 computer students at the time!

The "computerized" planting is cool!!!

The thing about the new phones are - can we have one that can make a call and you can actually hear the person with out it dropping the call? I may have to give a little on this because i have just about destroyed my hearing!

[mcwho]

Guess I am the dinosaur here. My first programming job was in 1973 in Chicago, IBM 360-30 32K of memory, thets "K". Moved into networks later and finally rn a classified data net in Baghdad. A good long run, retired now.

By the way, I have a few new mainframe tapes if anyone is interested, new never used.

I am playing with the Arduino microprocessor these days.

[wickershaw]

Me too. IBM 360-40 in 1970. I was the JCL expert. What I find amazing is that we have no nostalgia for those machines whatsoever and we are extremely pleased with our new lap tops. Yet we build 1965 automobiles.