2006-11-17

2006-Cory5412 vs. 1993-Cory5412 & 2019-Cory5412

Epic Time Battle!
I am intentionally depriving myself of sleep, therefore anybody who is insane enough to read these (I [heart] you Megan!) is now going to be subjected to some sort of rant about technology. (You have permission not to read this if you don't want to, Megan!) Of course, those folks in my English 105 class will know that my premise, (sleep deprivation) does not imply my conclusion (tech rant). Of course, I mentioned the sleep deprivation, right? That means that I don't care. [insert smile face here]

So what will I rant about today? Recently, at the vintage technology internet forum that I visit, the 68k Mac Liberation Army, a member posted an interesting PDF file. It was a 107 megabyte scan he made of an Apple Product Catalog from Fall of 1993. Thirteen years ago, the 68-page catalog of 68k Macintoshes was hot off the presses, and if we had lived back then, with unlimited funds, it was decided that every one of us would have a Mac Quadra 650 with the 16" Macintosh Color Display, a LaserWriter 630 Pro, with the 500-sheet feeder of course, along with every other little goodie we could get our grubby little liberator paws on.

I see a problem with this, however. My issue is that almost nobody provided a reasonable dream setup. My own setup was actually a Quadra 610 with one or two bits of software, the inexpensive monitor, as well as the cheap laser printer. Additionally an even more realistic setup that I cited, was a Mac Color Classic, and one of Apple's inkjet printers, paired with just one software package, an integrated piece of kit that can nearly do it all. As an added bonus, the cheaper computer and printer had carrying cases available for them, and they were within my arbitrarily defined budget of "just a few dollars more than whatever I want."

This leads into something else though. One thing I've noticed is that when it comes to older technology, it is extremely tempting to simply not look at the lower end machines. It is not every day when I hear somebody talking about how awesome it was that they were able to pick up a Mac LC and a 12" color display from the school. In fact, I have even heard some people talk with disdain about older low end machines, as opposed to the not-really-much-faster high end variant.

I do understand the argument that in 1993, there was a massive difference between a 25MHz 68LC040 and a 33MHz 68040 processor, let alone a 16MHz 68030. However, I think that that difference equates today to a distribution like this. the 16MHz 68030 would be about equivalent to a 1.5GHz Intel Core-Solo processor. The 25MHz 68LC040 would equate to a 1.83GHz Core1Duo, and the 33MHz monster powerhouse would equate to a 2.16GHz Core2Duo
microprocessor.

The funny thing is that in 2019 then another thirteen years have passed, and a retro technology enthusiast's group has formed and is discussing these things... the actual difference between a 1.5GHz single-core chip and a 2.16Ghz dual-core chip will be so negligible, that the 2019-Cory5412 is unlikely to claim that there is any practical speed difference at all.

Good god, do I want to slap the 2019-Cory5412! However, 2019-Cory5412 certainly brings up a good point about the aging of technology, and the 2006-Cory5412 is saying similar things.\

Of course... I don't think my rant is necessarily tech-based, I think it's now a rant of excessiveness. Quick everybody, I'm going to run out and get a 3.0GHz Mac Pro with 16 gigs of ram, four 750 gigabyte hard discs, two 16x SuperDrives, and I'm going to fill it with four of the nVidia GeFORCE 7300GT cards, then I am going to buy four 30" monitors, and four 23" monitors for it. I just know that 2019-Cory5412 will have one of those, but 2006-Cory5412 will certainly have something closer to a 17" iMac Core2Duo, 2.16GHz, 1 or 2 gig, 250gig.

I am certain that for that, 2019-Cory5412 will laugh at 2006-Cory5412, but who cares, because 1993-Cory5412 would have ended up with a used Mac Plus and, if he was lucky enough to get a laser printer at all, one of the original LaserWriters, or a LaserWriter II of some sort. He would have enjoyed it until its death (in 2003, I bet. There's a reason I don't want to be 1993-Cory5412.)

I [heart] my Dell OptiPlex GX110 and my 500MHz Apple PowerBook G3 "Pismo." As an aside, I probably have another tech-related blog entry somewhere, but this will do for now. It proves that I am definitely going to stick to polyphasic sleeping this time. (Yay! +10 points for reference to polyphasic sleep in this blog post.)

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