I’m rapidly on my way to becoming an old codger. This Christmas Break I soldered together a couple of hardware kits that emulate some old and older computers. One was an Altair 8800 copy, which in it’s day was one of the very first “personal computers” ever sold. The other kit was a PDP11/70 replica, which was some of the first “big iron” I ever programmed on.

Now as testiment to my codgerhood, my first computer experience was at the UofC on a CDC Cyber 170, followed by the Honeywell Multics system that replaced the CDC at the UofC a few years later.

My first job post-graduation was at a company using two IBM 3033 mainframes, each of which filled a large room. The laser printer filled an equally large room, but that’ another story (it was VERY fast).

From there I worked with various other systems, including the above (actual) PDP 11/70’s and even at one point some time on a Cray YMP.

But this isn’t about “bit iron”, it’s about the personal computer. My first was a TRS-80 Model I. I bought a silk-screen expansion board, sourced and soldered it together as I could not afford the “offical” one. Later I bought a TRS80 Model III, then the 4 and finally a Model 4P, which I still have complete with all manuals and software.

But in amongst that time came the IBM PC. It changed the world simply because it was IBM and it seemed *everyone* (or every company) bought one.

I never owned an IBM PC, nor a clone PC. My first forray into “modern” (i.e. post-IBM) PC ownership came when Tandy brought out the Model 2000. This was based on the 80186 chip, which was a “hybrid” – not an 8086 and not an 80286, but something in between. It was a great machine, and much more affordable (for the time) than a “286”.

As I struck out on my own consulting, I bought one of the newest “386” machines, and it cost me $6000. But for the time it was the greatest, fastest machine you could buy.

I lived, worked, and owned PCs through the 486 era, and into the “Pentium” machines. By then the operating systems were firmly Windows based. I skipped Windows 1 through 3, but at Windows 3.1 it finally came into it’s own. Windows for Workgroups (WFW 4) was a really nice system at the time, and I did quite a bit of work on it.

Then came Windows 95, which “changed the world”. Certainly it brought the internet to the common computer owner, as well as a pretty decent OS. Buggy, but decent. Then came Windows 98 and Windows ME (pronounced “meh” – as in “what the hell is this piece of crap???”). By then I’d gravitated to Windows NT, which had one great feature – it worked and worked well.

Through this we had Pentiums. They got faster, but they were Pentiums.

Eventually sometime after 2000 Intel started putting out the I series – I3, I5, I7. Each one had more cores and was faster than the predecessor. AMD also had multi-core chips, and there was, for a time, a nice “arms race” of computing horsepower.

At the end of April, 2012, I built my current PC system. It uses an Intel Quad Core i7 3770K, Asus Sabertooth Z77 ATX motherboard, 16GB of RAM, a couple of fancy graphics cards, a fancy case with water cooling, 2 x SSD hard drives and a Blue Ray writer. All state-of-the-art for early 2012. I bought the components and assembled it myself, and it was (and is) a very nice system.

It was also considered very fast and high performance. That particular Intel I7 (3770K) was quad core, and fast.

But what I’ve noticed since then is… nothing. I *think* you can buy processors with more cores, and probably faster ones, but today I realized that although I still get tech-type feeds, I haven’t actually heard much in the past few years about “newer, faster, better” processors.

It’s as if we’ve exhausted that particular line of “faster, better” in personal computing. I suspect that for 99% of the market, ANYTHING you buy today is plenty fast enough. The other 1% is gamers, and perhaps if I got gaming feeds or magazines I would hear more about “faster gaming machines”, but I do wonder.

Have we really reached the end end of the “faster, better” in computing hardware?

I also wondered; if I wanted to find out what the FASTEST computer you could use today, how would I even go about finding it? Yea, there’s “the google”, but I’ve also started noticing that between all the “targeted results” based on what you like, it’s getting harder and harder to find any REAL information on the internet these days.

<sigh> I guess I really am becoming an old codger.

While fretting about the ever increasing connectivity bill, I discovered that I could get faster internet for about $8 more per month from Telus, my current provider.

We don’t have fiber in our area, so all I can get is an upgrade from 25mb/s to 75mb/s download speed. Still, for $8 that’s a no-brainer. I called and an installation was arranged.

In order to get this speed, the modem needs a bonded pair of wires, so a second jack was added and the new modem connected.

Unlike past modems, this new one is full-featured and ultimately configurable. However, before I started playing I first simply plugged the old system into the new modem for a test. Just to summarize, old system was ADSL modem -> Linksys RVS4000 firewall -> house network. The initial test system was New modem -> Linksys RVS4000 -> house network. So all should be good, correct?

Before they came I did a Telus speed test. It showed 22.5 down, 1 up, which is pretty good for the 25 plan. The new plan (75) should be 75down, 10up. Once they were done, I ran another Telus speed test: 10up, but 4 down!!! What could be wrong?

On a hunch, based on a bad streaming experience some years ago as well as issues with the RVS4000 a decade ago in a co-locate, I pulled the RVS4000 and re-ran the test: 75down, 10up!

So here’s a warning to anyone using 10-year old technology with faster internet: DON’T. The old crap just can’t keep up. The RVS4000 may have been an expensive device 10 years ago, but it’s brain was an atom processor, which is about 1/100 of a modern smart phone (just guessing!).

At any rate, the little atom processor simply cannot keep up with modern high speed internet. This also confirms the RVS4000 was the problem with streaming some years ago, though I could not pull it at the time to test.

However, the new modem  is awesome. It has wifi that is incredible. My old wifi was a good 10 year old device with big antennae, but devices only ever got 2 bars max anywhere in the upstairs. Now you get 5 bars everywhere, and coupled with the high speed, downloads are amazingly fast.

So all-in-all a great upgrade for $8 more per month.

My iPhone 4 is so old now that it’s really getting flakey – freezing up at the most inconvenient times requiring a hard reboot and all that.

So I checked my Virgin mobile plan, and I have some money in the (discontinued) supertab plan. In fact, enough to get a new phone. Now I know there are new phones for $0 on a two-year plan, but I was looking at what I could get for the supertab balance I had.

This is nice as there’s no other way to use up the supertab, so why not spend it on a new phone?

Anyway, it quickly became apparent that Android was out. The phones were either way too cheap, or way too expensive. Besides, I’m not all that thrilled with Samsung phones either as they give you a Samsung mangled Android, not the pure deal.

So what did come up in my search within my (no cost) budget? An iPhone 7. Yep. Apple stuff.

So I went out last week and got it, and it’s actually a very nice phone. More cool, I was able to move all my stuff off the old phone to the new phone in two painless steps as I still have the Macbook available. All I had to do was turn it on, update whatever was out-of-date (including iTunes) and then backup the old phone and restore the new one (data and apps only).

The new phone is, as I said, pretty cool. It’s nice to have something that will last for a few years before getting orphaned again. If the iphone 4 is any indication, that was not really a bad deal for me.

The only thing I had to do was sign up for my same plan for 2 years, which I was using anyway.

So I’m an apple dude again. Kind of. 😉