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Louis Kessler’s Behold Blog » Blog Entry           prev Prev   Next next

Computers 23 years ago - Tue, 25 Feb 2020

#Delphi25 #Delphi25th – I came across an email I sent to a friend of mine on February 6, 1997 (at 1:17 AM). I’ll just give it here without commentary, but it should amuse and bring back recollections of people who were early PC users.
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You should find this message to be a little different. I am sending it using Microsoft Mail & News through my Concentric Network connection, rather than than using my Blue Wave mail reader through my Muddy Waters connection. This gets around my problem of not being able to attach files, as you had tried for me. In a future E-mails, I can attach pictures for you. I presume you can read GIFs, or would you prefer JPG or TIF?

I will still be keeping my MWCS account until the end of 1997, but I am switching over more and more to my Concentric account. I am still not entirely happy with Windows-based Newsreaders yet, and find Blue Wave much more convenient for reading newsgroups. Hopefully, by the end of the year I will have this sorted out.

I bit the bullet, and switched over to Windows 95 at home. I first had to upgrade my machine. I bought 16 MB more memory (to give me 24 MB) for $99 at Supervalue (of all places!) and bought a 2 GB hard drive for $360 (also at Supervalue!) less a $30 US mail-in rebate on the Hard Drive and a $30 sweatshirt thrown in due to a Supervalue coupon when over $200 is spent. My 260 MB drive that I bought 3 1/2 years ago already had Stacker on it to make it 600 MB, and I only had 80 MB free. I wanted to get rid of Stacker before going to Windows 95.

It only took me 3 1/2 hours to install the RAM and the Hard Drive myself at home! It wasn’t without problems, but the operation was a success. I had hooked up my old and new Drives as master and slave and everything worked. The next night, I took another 3 1/2 hours to transfer everything from my old drive to my new one, removing the old drive, and getting the system working from the new drive - again not without problems, but completed that evening. I am very proud of myself! The next evening, it took about an hour to get Windows 95 installed, and to customize it to the way I liked.

This hardware upgrade should be good for another couple of years. I only have the power supply, base, keyboard, mouse, and monitor as original parts. All the rest has been since upgraded.

Windows 95 - Well I actually like 90% of it better than Windows 3.1, and am only finicky about 10% of it. I know, I know, buy a Mac you will say. Well I hope you are prepared to buy a new operating system every six months like Jobs says you’ll have to. I still agree Macs are a good system, but there is much more software available for PCs, Macs are 40% more expensive, and they still use that horrible character font that they used in the early 80’s - yecch!

In the meantime, I have kept myself very, very, very, very, very, very,
very, very busy. I have been working hard on many different fronts, after work playing hard with the kids until their bedtimes (usually closer to 10 p.m. than to 8), most often working on the Computer from 10 to 11 to 12 to (yikes) 1 or 2 sometimes - Got my web pages up (http://www.concentric.net/~Ikessler); have responded to about 50 e-mail messages and inquiries about it; designed a tender proposal for the photographic work for our Cemetery Photography Project
(http://www.concentric.net/~Ikessler/cemphoto.shtml); and I’ve started learning how to use Borland Delphi to develop my BEHOLD program (http://www.concentric.net/Ikessler/behold.shtml)

Whew! I’m getting tired just thinking about all this!

Take care.  Louis

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