h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Rooting through the Big Cupboard O'Stuff this afternoon, looking for forgotten gems to sell for huge profit on a well known auction site, I came across something which wouldn't raise any cash but I found very interesting. It's the box which housed the 8Mb RAM upgrade I bought for my very first PC back in 1996. The PC came with a whole 4Mb of RAM built in, so with this upgrade I clearly had as much memory as I would ever need, as confirmed by the blurb on the back of the box:

Recommended memory expansion for your application
2MB - Basic word processing, small spreadsheets, basic communication packages
4MB - Windows, desk top publishing, extensive spreadsheets, large database user
8MB - OS/2, sophisticated Windows 3.1 user, advanced desk top publishing, Computer Aided Design
16MB - Power user, advanced Windows 3.1 user, network file server

It's nice to think that I was a sophisticated Windows 3.1 user, although I'm not sure what that might involve. Donning a smoking jacket and smoking a cigarette through a holder while waiting for the b*stard to boot up, I suppose.

The other interesting thing is the price label - for a mere 8 megabytes of RAM, remember - £119.99. And that's with a special offer - was £199.99.

Blimey..

I'd hate to think whats lurking at the back of my cupboards!

I was jealous of my cousin who had a Commodore64. That had four times as much memory as my TRS-80 Color Computer... It had 16... K!!!

And you saved programs on a cassette recorder!

And if you wanted to go directly to a certain program on the tape you had to write down the tape counter number!

Eeh thems were the days

I remember when we were lads, we didny have these fancy type computer thinggies, oh no, over in Suffolk, I was the envy of the neighbourhood with my 6 Horse power oak and teak computer, it also had a wow of having 25 MB badgerRAM

I only ever had a rubiks cube

A rubiks cub! why, we drempt of having a rubiks cube, when I were a lad we had to make do with moving two sugar lumps about and pretending it were a rubiks cube!

Sugar lumps? We had to make cubes by cutting down cow pats with our teeth.

Teeth?! In my day we only had us gums to chew on the scraps of leather from our fathers bootstraps.

Why, in MY day we dint have no fancy-schmancy internet. If you wanted porn you had to go to the store and buy it. And if you weren't old enough you had to go find some dirty old man to go and buy it for ya! AND WE LIKED IT THAT WAY!

Luxury.

You try tellin' the young people of today that, an' they won't belive er!

* Goes back to lurking in Serephina's cupboards *

RF

As long as you don't have a camera in there!

Only a video webcam, so nothing to worry about.

http://theviewfromserephinascupboard.com

RF

We used to dreeeeam of cameras

The link don't work!

It was working yesterday. Serephina must have taken legal action.

>> The link don't work! <<

This one does, though:

http://www.theviewfromfordscupboard.com

RF

Nope

Works fine for me. Must be something wrong with your computer.

I can see you!

RF