HOW COMPUTERS HAVE CHANGED OVER THE YEARS

Having just purchased a new laptop, I marvel at how quickly personal computers have developed.  When I was a child, there were only mainframe computers, the size of refrigerators, and only businesses or universities had those. The Apolo 11 crew had a portable computer for their Command Module but it was extremely primitive compared to what we now have. Microprocessors didn't exist until I was well into my adult years.

Do you remember your first computer? Mine was a Vic-20 that I bought second hand from a shortwave-listening club member. Instead of a hard drive, programs were stored on cassette tapes. To access one, you had to pop the correct tape into the player and type in a command to run it. Thirty years later, I still have the Vic-20. It might be a collector's item someday so I'm hanging onto it.

My first "real" computer was a used IBM clone which I bought in 1993 for seven-hundred dollars from a computer store. It had a 100MB hard drive and drives for 5.25" and 3.5" floppy disks. It also had 2MB of memory, too small to run Windows 3.1. A friend gave me an amber monochrome monitor and I bought a dot matrix printer from a friend at work. As I've written before, this computer opened the world of writing for me.

It wasn't until November of 2000 that I bought a new PC with Windows 98 on it. Along with writing and research, I was able to record my music to its hard drive and burn my own CD-Rs. I also made tray and j cards for my disks, as well as printing labels for them.

In April of 2008, I bought a new PC with a much faster CPU and it was able to use USB flash drives. I made videos with it and the PC is still my main machine today. I'll have to upgrade to Windows 8.1 from XP but some of my beloved programs won't run anymore on it.

Now I have a laptop, fulfilling a dream I've had for years about writing outside during the warm months of the year. I can also take it with me whenever I travel. Though I'll have to get used to its flat keys, I feel confident that this helpful device will be of use when we get our lovely summer weather here in Alberta.

I've mentioned my computers and how I wrote them in my three memoirs. Read about the first two at Bruce Atchison's books page. My most recent paperback is at Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, and Powell's Books.

WINDOWS XP SUPPORT ENDS TODAY

Those who know me well understand that I don't like changing something that works and that I find useful. This is particularly true of computer programs and operating systems.

I resisted switching from DOS to Windows until November of 2000. Even then, I had Windows 98 installed on my new PC because I heard it had all the bugs worked out of it. What a disaster that was. It kept crashing and giving me all kinds of grief. In spite of it's problems, I resisted upgrading until 2008.

Though friends said that Windows XP worked well, I felt skeptical. "Could any Microsoft product work properly?" I thought whenever folks mentioned XP's excellent performance.

When I had a new computer custom-built for me in 2008, I let the tech install XP. My friends were right about it working better than past Windows operating systems. I'm still glad that the end of support for Windows 98 forced me to buy a new PC.

Now I face the same problem again. My old faithful operating system won't be supported with bug fixes and security updates after today, leaving me more vulnerable to hackers. Replacing Windows XP feels like jumping into the unknown but I need to upgrade sooner or later.

Thanks to the Radway Library, I have another PC which runs XP. If my programs aren't compatible with the new computer's operating system, I can always use that machine. Meanwhile, I'll have to adjust to Windows 8 or 8.1 and it's changes from XP.

For more information about the discontinuation of XP and how to test your machine to discover if 8.1 works on it, visit the Microsoft site.

As for MS DOS, I wrote all three of my books using it as well as WordPerfect 5.1. My first two paperbacks are featured on my Bruce Atchison's books page. How I Was Razed: A Journey from Cultism to Christianity is in e-book, as well as paperback form, at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Virtual Bookworm Publishers.

Sorry for my absence on February 6th.

A trojan trashed I.E. 8 on my Windows XP machine on Feb. 6 and I couldn't fix it. I'm using my old computer with Windows 98 to send this. I hope to post a new blog on Friday, provided this old Windows 98 machine doesn't crash while my new PC is being reformatted. I learned my lesson. Internet Explorer 8 is not to be trusted.