Computer monstrosities!!!

Vyse

I'm sitting here on my PC wondering what if my 20 year younger counterpart encountered of what we had today. Internet acess (which would blow anybody away) and the massive computing power of modern day PCs.

Content with myself I take a look below my knees. A massive hulk of plastic, that being the processor, hard drive, graphics card and memory!!!!!! When did it come to this? I remember the days when everything was captured in an oversized Amiga keyboard!!!!! Where did it go do wrong?I think we've managed to maximize while failing to minimize!!!!!! It's crazy to think that we could fit a 500 or ST on our laps while todays marvels would nearly cripple us!!!!!!

Saruman

emm laptops?
we have bigger PC's because people like to be able to upgrade them.
You can get units smaller than an amiga if you want... but it will be obsolete and un-upgradable within a year.

DublinWriter

Yes, but remember that the 16-bit CPUs in Amigas and ST's of our vintage ran at a measly 10Mhz or there about. Todays processors run at hundreds of times that speed and therefore generate a lot more heat.

Also consider that Amigas and ST's didn't usually have an in-built HD.

As the poster said, if you want something that will sit on your lap, erm, get a laptop!

I've switched over to the small footprint Shuttle range for my own self-builds as I'm not a fan of big neon towers.

Vyse

I'm going to be honest here. I was absolutely plastered when I wrote that post:D A mix of alcohol and sentimentality.

tman

Fair play for coming clean, makes a hell of a lot more sense now:D

K.O.Kiki

Has someone been not looking at Macs, or Shuttles?

ambro25

Think of it in those terms - back in the day, you could have an A600 or an A1200, or a 520ST or 1040ST, or an AT. And that was that. But as appealing and small as the form factor was for the Commodores/Ataris, the form factor had nothing to do whatsoever with the intended use, and they were (by contemporary standards) jacks of all trades and masters of none.

Today you can have pretty much any form factor you want and tailor not only the innards to your hearts' content and acc. to your purpose, but also (directly and indirectly) the 'innards container' depending on what you build (or buy, thinking of Shuttle's XPC200 series).

I don't subscribe to neon-lit skyscrapers either (each to their own), and I'm glad 'progress' will allow me to let my kids totally loose, very early on, on a miniature solid-state fully-functional PC, with no fear of expensive hardware breakdown - couldn't have done that with a 'state-of-the-art' A600 back then

Sarky

I love the fact that I can push the power button on my Amiga and HEY! It's on! Or with a hard disk, the whole OS loads up inside 7-8 seconds, including whatever add-ons you put in.

There is something to the OP though. These days, it's often a matter of throwing CPU power and memory at something until it runs better, as opposed to carefully making sure the code is as effecient as possible. Windows, I'm looking at you. Consider Gloom, on the Amiga: A Doom clone, capable of running at an acceptable pace on an un-upgraded Amiga 1200 with a 14 MHz CPU and 2 megabytes of RAM. Hell, they even got Quake to run on them (adding some RAM for the graphics, fair enough) with enough code-fiddling.

I miss that. I really do.

Vyse

Yep, I think there would be a fair amount of people on boards that miss those good old days. Still have my Amiga, even still have my Commodore 16 (my first computer).

There were even some great games available. I remember the first time I played Monkey Island. I was about 13/14. I couldn't get over how brilliant it was.

amp

I find it amazing that the cost of a half meg of ram for an Amiga would get you around 4/5 gigs of ram for a pc today. But as much as I loved my Amiga I wouldn't trade it for the beauty and excellence of something like HL2 or FEAR.

Some things don't change though. Gameplay still beats graphics any day.