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Can We Get Past 1982, Please?!

173.57.125.26
Posted on November 14, 2014 at 22:34:45
Inmate51
 I just HAVE to rant about this. Way back in 1982, when the Apple II was the only game in town, the darn 6502 computer with 0 MB couldn't keep up with me.

Here we are in 2014, with giga stuff, and it hasn't changed. I'm STILL waiting for the computer, even at 50 mbps.

F-ing advertising.

:(

 

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    ...
the problem is.., posted on November 15, 2014 at 00:53:21
cloudwalker
Audiophile

Posts: 634
Location: central wa
Joined: September 27, 2012
 money. To be exact it is this "intensive" advertising that slows everything down. Some people even go out to buy a new computer. That works...for about 1 year. it is an endless cycle...

 

your operating system is the problem, posted on November 15, 2014 at 03:32:34
bullethead
 I can't keep up with Linux Mint on a quad core intel i5 with 24gb ram and 2gb video card with 4k monitor (4x the resolution of HD). Cost me maybe $1,500 and it is many years old.

Anytime I use Mac or Windows OS I get nothing but problems.

 

RE: Can We Get Past 1982, Please?!, posted on November 15, 2014 at 05:00:25
fantja
Audiophile

Posts: 15518
Location: Alabama
Joined: September 11, 2010
 Interesting...
what/which change(s) would you like to see?

 

RE: Can We Get Past 1982, Please?!, posted on November 15, 2014 at 06:26:08
jsm71
Audiophile

Posts: 1123
Location: Cincinnati OH
Joined: June 16, 2011
 You can't avoid the majority of advertising on the web, but you can have a fast PC. Build it yourself from the shell up with only what you need. A good place to do this is MicroCenter. I have less than 6 software programs installed other than the operating system, Chrome, and NOD32 (the best and least offensive anti-virus you can get). My motherboard and RAM is modest. The machine is quite fast because it is clean.

When you buy a pre-built machine it comes with tons of junk and trial software installed. Plus you don't get the install disks for any of it. I will never do that again.

 

Free Market, posted on November 15, 2014 at 06:43:28
Awe-d-o-file
Dealer

Posts: 21037
Location: 50 miles west of DC
Joined: January 10, 2004
 OK now that I have your attention get a proxy server! I recommend Proxomitron. Run Hijack This once a week or so. Both are free. Quit whining and take action. I love seeing the word "ad" in red, bracketed, where the ad is supposed to go. I do what I can top take control back. Never use Internet Explorer either.


ET
ET

"If at first you don't succeed, keep on sucking till you do suck seed" - Curly Howard 1936

 

RE: Can We Get Past 1982, Please?!, posted on November 15, 2014 at 07:21:35
Inmate51
 Great replies so far!

I'll just add that I meant 1981. By 1982, the IBM PC was introduced, with it's blazing fast 8088 processor and 48KB of memory.

JSM wrote that I should build my own PC. Ha! I have 5 PCs, and I built 3 of them (the other two are a laptop - I don't build laptops, and a 1995 vintage Micron with a screaming fast Pentium 133 and a whopping 256K of memory - which I use for word processing and spreadsheets). These three are all duo-core Intel processors with at least 2 GB of memory. The one I'm at right now is my music PC, connected to my stereo. I run Firefox as my browser on all of them.

The problem I see is advertising. Every now and then, I'll get a message to install a new version of Flash Player. F, I don't use it. The only F-ing thing that uses it is advertising! Ok, so we have to live with advertising, but does it have to be full-motion video?!!!

:)

 

RE: Can We Get Past 1982, Please?!, posted on November 15, 2014 at 07:38:21
tesla
Audiophile

Posts: 3180
Location: San Diego County, California
Joined: October 25, 2000
 The (way overpriced) Apple II?

What about the Atari's?

The Commodore's?

TI/99?


Apple II was just another computer back then, most of them based upon the MOS Technologies 6502, which was a Commodore processor.
Proudly serving content-free posts since 1984.

 

In a word, corporate power. , posted on November 15, 2014 at 08:31:46
tinear
Audiophile

Posts: 65782
Location: Kansas City, KS
Joined: April 9, 2006
 "Downloading a high-definition movie takes about seven seconds in Seoul, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Zurich, Bucharest and Paris, and people pay as little as $30 a month for that connection. In Los Angeles, New York and Washington, downloading the same movie takes 1.4 minutes for people with the fastest Internet available, and they pay $300 a month for the privilege, according to The Cost of Connectivity, a report published Thursday by the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute."

 

Ever heard of ad blockers, posted on November 15, 2014 at 09:45:11
Mike K
Audiophile

Posts: 13973
Location: 97701
Joined: September 23, 1999
 There's all manner of ad blocking software available, and most of it is
free.

Lack of skill dictates economy of style. - Joey Ramone

 

Ad blockers are good...., posted on November 15, 2014 at 10:01:45
rlw
Audiophile

Posts: 3347
Location: Near West Palm Bch, FL
Joined: August 29, 2006
 And you should probably also be using Ghostery - it blocks the insane number of trackers that are being used nowadaze. Check it out, great program and totally free!!
-RW-

 

RE: Can We Get Past 1982, Please?!, posted on November 15, 2014 at 11:01:43
Jerry P
Audiophile

Posts: 897
Location: NE Ohio
Joined: June 17, 2000
 If you use IE 9 or above set up tracking protection.
I did what FenderLover suggested and on some sites
more than 100 services are blocked.

 

RE: Can We Get Past 1982, Please?!, posted on November 15, 2014 at 11:21:40
stehno
Manufacturer

Posts: 739
Location: Oregon
Joined: November 8, 2001
 Perhaps it's just a mindset thing.

Surely, you didn't think all this time since 1982 the technological advancements were for YOU to take advantage of.

Did you?


 

don't do it!, posted on November 15, 2014 at 11:35:16
cloudwalker
Audiophile

Posts: 634
Location: central wa
Joined: September 27, 2012
 Ever tried them? I did, and guess what? It downloaded several programs that changed everything including my homepage. Not sure my computer will ever be the same again....

 

RE: Can We Get Past 1982, Please?!, posted on November 15, 2014 at 13:24:46
Sondek
Audiophile

Posts: 9623
Location: Fort Worth
Joined: May 17, 2000
Contributor
  Since: April 5, 2002
 And can you imagine what it will be like when those advertisers have legal entitlement to "fast lanes" and the rest of us have to take what's left?

 

RE: Ad blockers are good...., posted on November 15, 2014 at 13:43:30
mraudio
Audiophile

Posts: 459
Location: Northern Colorado
Joined: November 4, 2006
 Thanks for the heads up on Ghostery! I'd never heard of this. I loaded it this morning and it works fantastic.

 

RE: Can We Get Past 1982, Please?!, posted on November 15, 2014 at 17:09:55
AbeCollins
Audiophile

Posts: 46280
Location: USA
Joined: June 22, 2001
Contributor
  Since: February 2, 2002
 Stop your whining man, unless you're willing to use my 1200 baud modem for a week! ;-)



 

RE: Can We Get Past 1982, Please?!, posted on November 15, 2014 at 18:35:18
Raymond Leggs
Audiophile

Posts: 748
Joined: November 25, 2007
 most of those programs claiming to be upgrades to flash players and adware removers and blockers are adware and bad-ware themselves. I know from experience. they are hard to get rid of too. i even killed a laptops video drivers trying to remove some.

 

I use both..., posted on November 15, 2014 at 19:12:12
R Browne
Audiophile

Posts: 1710
Location: So. Cal.
Joined: January 14, 2002
 ...AdBlock and Ghostery. They work very well but once in a while you have to disable Ghostery on a particular web page to gain full functionality.

 

RE: Can We Get Past 1982, Please?!, posted on November 16, 2014 at 07:53:37
Palustris
Audiophile

Posts: 2408
Location: Cape Cod
Joined: September 12, 2008
 "Way back in 1982, when the Apple II was the only game in town, "

Apple has never been the "only game in town." I had a DEC Rainbow 100 in 1982 running CPM.

 

You might also want to check out..., posted on November 16, 2014 at 10:04:12
rlw
Audiophile

Posts: 3347
Location: Near West Palm Bch, FL
Joined: August 29, 2006
 The Random Agent Spoofer. I use Firefox and this is one of the add-ons available. It helps to keep website data collectors from building a profile of your internet usage.
-RW-

 

RE: Can We Get Past 1982, Please?!, posted on November 16, 2014 at 12:31:14
Inmate51
 I hear ya. Note that in another post, I corrected myself and wrote 1981. (Yes, I know there was also the Radio Shack TRS-80, but it never gained the popular appeal of the Apple II.) That's the year I was introduced to the Apple by a friend who, at work, used a DEC PDP-11, but at home, used an Apple. By '82, the IBM PC was available.

In '81, there was also the Xerox 820, running CP/M, with its 8" floppy disks, but, for some odd reason ;) , it never broke into the mainstream of Joe & Mary's household. "Asteroids", "Space Invaders", and "VisiCalc" brought the PC to the masses and corporate cubicles on the Apple II.

So, the personal computer market didn't really take off until the Apple II, hence my comment "the only game in town" (discounting, of course, the "game" computers).

In any case, the point of my original post was to highlight the fact that, 30+ years later, even with screaming fast processors which need their own fans, gigabytes of memory and instant access solid state drives, many of today's apps are just as slow as apps of 30 years ago. Why can't we ever seem to "get ahead of the game"? Examples: When I'm recording audio from the stereo with SoundForge, my Internet performance slows WAY down, and FireFox takes several seconds to load even when it's the only app being started. Yes, I get it: Programmers take advantage of every bit of available memory, processes, etc., but it's still frustrating.

:)

 

RE: Can We Get Past 1982, Please?!, posted on November 21, 2014 at 08:30:53
Ed Sawyer
Audiophile

Posts: 2595
Joined: November 3, 2000
 The Apple II easily outclassed all those other pretenders mentioned. It had > 75% marketshare, and the best software (and tons of it). The processor was the least of the issues, the best part of the Apple II was the architecture. Woz ruled. ;-)

 

really?, posted on November 21, 2014 at 11:09:34
tesla
Audiophile

Posts: 3180
Location: San Diego County, California
Joined: October 25, 2000
 Ok, in the US, the Apple II, (with the upcoming cult of Apple and Steve Jobs) was the computer that was taken most seriously by the business crowd, (in the US, pre the IBM PC/Microsoft taking over the market), but the Commodore 64 was/is the best selling computer model of all time.

BTW, the previous Commodore business computer line, (unfortunately named Pet") were arguably superior to the Apple II line, at least hardware-wise. They also sold a lot of Pets to schools back then, both in the US and Canada.

How about dual 5 1/4 floppy disk drives with up to 1 meg per disk? 5 and 7.5 hard disks? built-in monitors with up to 80 columns? The top of the line Superpet business computer was the first computer to have a dual processor system.

SuperPET 9000 series

CPU: MOS 6502 and Motorola 6809, 1 MHz
RAM: 96 kB
ROM: 48 kB, including BASIC 4.0 and other programming languages (Waterloo MicroAPL, MicroFORTRAN, MicroBASIC, MicroPascal, MicroCOBOL)
Video: MOS 6545, 12" monochrome monitor, 80×25 character display
Sound: single piezo "beeper" (optional external speaker driven by MOS 6522 CB2 pin)
Ports: MOS 6520 PIA, MOS 6522 VIA, MOS 6551 ACIA, 1 RS-232, 2 Datassette ports (1 on the back), 1 IEEE-488 port for connecting peripherals.
Notes: basically an 8000 with ROMs for programming languages, it also had three character sets, and an RS-232 for use as a terminal

peripherals

Commodore Business Machines made a variety of disk drives available for the PET, using the IEEE 488 interface, including:

Commodore 2031 single disk drive (170 kB single-sided 5.25" format)
Commodore 4040 dual disk drive (same disk format as the 2031) could be used as a stand-alone disk copier.
Commodore 8024 132 column printer, friction or traction gear, Mannesmann Tally mechanics
Commodore 8050 dual disk drive (500 kB single-sided 5.25" format)
Commodore 8075 plotter, Watanabe mechanics
Commodore 8250 "quad density" dual disk drive (1 MB capacity, same as the 8050, but double-sided)
Commodore 8280 dual disk drive (8") (500 kB MFM format)
Commodore 9060 hard drive (5 MB)
Commodore 9090 hard drive (7.5 MB)
Commodore SFD-1001 "quad density" single disk drive (basically a single-drive 8250 model)

Basically, Commodore computers were much more popular than any other computer back in the eighties in Europe and Canada.

For more information about the early Commodore Pets, see this. BTW, Rockwell used Pets in those years, I'm sure it didn't hurt that the Pet line used the Hewlett Packard GPIB bus for connecting things like drives
and printers.



Proudly serving content-free posts since 1984.

 

RE: really?, posted on November 21, 2014 at 13:06:43
Inmate51
 Yet, when I worked part-time at a Computerland store in 81-82 in between recordings and sound system installations, the Apple II was flying out the door by the dozens. Commodore PET? - I don't remember ever selling one or anyone asking about it.

:)

 

RE: really?, posted on November 21, 2014 at 13:15:56
tesla
Audiophile

Posts: 3180
Location: San Diego County, California
Joined: October 25, 2000
 I'm confused.Did the store you work at sell Commodore computers?



Proudly serving content-free posts since 1984.

 

RE: really?, posted on November 21, 2014 at 13:42:49
Inmate51
 "I'm confused.Did the store you work at sell Commodore computers?"

I don't remember for sure - we were busy testing and selling Apples, and then, later, Apples and IBMs. It was Computerland, and we sold a variety of things, but not TRS-80s, lol. As I said previously, I don't remember anyone asking about the PET.

What was your store's balance of sales?

 

I am a hobbiest, posted on November 21, 2014 at 13:50:36
tesla
Audiophile

Posts: 3180
Location: San Diego County, California
Joined: October 25, 2000
 I never worked retail. However, I am a Commodore fanatic, as many more are still.





Proudly serving content-free posts since 1984.

 

RE: I am a hobbiest, posted on November 21, 2014 at 15:34:17
Inmate51
 That's all well and good. Carry on!

Personally, my friend who first introduced me to the Apple was a programmer on the DEC PDP. As a sound and acoustics guy, I could NOT WAIT to learn how to write some BASIC programs for sound and acoustics modeling! The Apple gave me the means to begin, and the IBM PC provided even more capabilities.

:)

 

RE: I am a hobbiest, posted on November 21, 2014 at 21:55:40
esande
Audiophile

Posts: 1663
Location: Washington, DC
Joined: December 27, 2008
 I'm a hobbyist also. Frankly this is the best time to be one. For $1000 or so US you can build a fairly top of the line computer with name brand parts. SSD, Haswell processor, top of the line Intel board maxed out on RAM.

What a difference a decade makes, thanks to China Inc.

It's all good.

 

RE: Can We Get Past 1982, Please?!, posted on November 23, 2014 at 08:42:02
IEaudiodude
Audiophile

Posts: 2814
Location: So Cal
Joined: February 11, 2010
 +1 NOD32............... Best I have used
Photobucket

 

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