These Are the Days, My Friend

By Michael Gartenberg

August 8, 2005 12:00 PM ET

Computerworld - The poet Robert Frost wrote, "Why abandon a belief merely because it ceases to be true?" A few months back, I talked about things I missed about older products ["There's a Scarcity of Great Stuff," QuickLink 54487]. Sometimes I find myself sounding a lot like my dad romanticizing the good old days. But after giving it a little thought, I have to admit that the good old days weren't always so good, and what we've got now isn't bad. Let's look at a few things, then and now.
My desktop PC: Ten years ago, I was using a 133-MHz Pentium, with 16MB of RAM, a 250MB hard disk and an SVGA monitor. It did productivity applications pretty well, but that's about it. Today, I use a 3-GHz P4 with 1GB of RAM and 200GB of hard-disk space connected to a 42-in. display. It can do productivity applications, but it also records all my TV shows and holds my entire music collection and every photo I've taken since 1995.
My laptop: In 1995, I used a PowerBook 540c. It was a pretty heavy computer, had a floppy drive and got about an hour of battery life. It connected me on the road if I was near a phone jack or an Ethernet connection. The ThinkPad I'm using today gets six hours of battery life, connects if there's a phone or Ethernet and uses Wi-Fi or EV-DO if there's not. It has enough disk space to keep all my work as well as my music collection and a few videos to watch on the road. It also weighs less than 4 pounds.
My PDA: Ten years ago, I used a Newton from Apple. It had a great operating system but was bulky, ran down AA batteries quickly and couldn't synchronize with my PC to keep my contacts and calendar. My PDA today is a Palm LifeDrive that has 4GB of storage. It syncs not only my calendar and contact information, but also every business document on my PC, and it has copies of every picture on my computer formatted for its screen and a few hundred songs to listen to. It also lets me play an arcade-perfect version of Pac-Man.
My phone: My bulky cell phone 10 years ago had to go in my laptop bag. It let me talk for about an hour, if I was lucky enough to get reception. Today, my smart phone is tiny and fits in my pocket. It carries a copy of my contacts and calendar

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