Progress in Computing Marches On I admit it, I am a computer guy and even in my twilight years, I still love them. I think one of the reasons is if you compare my life as a child, we had nothing like there is today. I was almost 30 years old before the first electronic calculators started to come on the market. I had one of the first home computers and this got me hooked. It was a Sinclair. The computer had a tiny memory and the most it could do was create a clock face with one hand, yet I thought at the time this was incredible. I got into the Amiga scene and began to write public domain software and really enjoyed myself. The Amiga was the most advanced computer of its day and was made by the Commodore company. That was the company which made the Commodore 64, the computer which is said to have sold the most computers of one brand. If the company hadn’t been run so badly, it would have dominated the market. Amiga people were very close, they were more like extreme fans of a sports team and many of them took the opportunity to get together whenever they could. They would swap programs at Amiga club meetings and discuss the new technologies being incorporated into newer models. Amiga clubs sprung up everywhere. Unfortunately, they are only a distant memory as is the Amiga computer. Believe it or not it still has a few people who would pay very high prices to own one. You can find them occasionally on Ebay along with different parts. When the Amiga computer went defunct, we Amiga people had to move on. The choice was generally between Windows machines and Apple Machines. Both companies sold quite a few of each, but eventually the Windows machines outsold Apple, but Apple was still selling many computers and branched out into all sorts of devices. I started to get interested in building my own computers. In those days it was much cheaper than buying them already assembled, not like today with the high price for parts. Today, it only pays to build your own computer if you are going really high end. I must have built 7 or 8 of them over the years as they kept getting more powerful. There is even photographic instructions on this site showing step by step how I built one. Actually, it wasn’t that hard. I remember the first time I built one, I was very worried it wouldn’t work correctly and might not even turn on. I was pleasantly surprised when it worked perfectly. As years went by, I stopped programming as a hobby. It was just too time consuming and interfered with everything else I wanted to do. As computer chips became more powerful, other devices based on them started to appear. Apple came out with the IPod, but there were also other devices not Apple that played music while being very small. The IPod was more versatile. As time went by the number of different devices increased. Apple eventually came out with cell phones and computer controlled watches. Not to be outdone, Android which had been invented by that time produced the same type of products. Android software is open source and free, but the devices created with it are not usually free. Today we have two camps, Apple and Android for devices, but there is a bigger player in computers and that is Microsoft with Windows. Companies like Facebook, Amazon and others have entered the voice assistant device market. Everyday, voice assistants are becoming more lifelike. They have made it into the auto industry and now help us route our trips, make phone calls and do many other things. AI or Artificial Intelligence, is improving our lives, but it also has a down side. Strange as it sounds, the price of old computers has gone up in some cases. It seems there are people who collect these machines. It isn’t only computers but also electronic devices which are rare. I saw a rare IPod with an asking price of $17,849 on Ebay. This just blows my mind. It seems certain generations and models can command some really steep prices. I think people really realized how powerful computers were getting when they saw the first self-driving car. Who would have ever thought about that happening? When I was younger, that was the stuff of science fiction. Another area where computers are making a big impression is in robotics. We are only in the early stages right now, but robots are getting more life like every day. An announcement was recently made stating scientists have invented a new skin for robots which is not only very lifelike, but will allow them to experience pain. Experience pain? I have to wonder why anyone would want to do that? What would the robot really feel, a signal saying this is pain, or would some of its functions stop being available? I doubt very much the idea of robotic pain bears any resemblance to human pain. Computers just keep improving and now we are getting into quantum computers which are said to be far more powerful than any classic computer could ever become. All is not a bed of roses however. The quantum computers are becoming more and more powerful, but they need huge refrigeration units to keep them very cold, at about -450 degrees Fahrenheit. This has prevented quantum computers from ever replacing classic computers. Yet there is hope these refrigeration units may not be needed in the future and a quantum computer will be able to run at room temperature, and guess what? The first one to do this is now operating in Australia, and it is only the size of a desktop computer. It is only a test model however and will take a long time to test. It seems it uses the flaws in diamonds which are empty spaces as the quantum work area. Don’t ask me to explain further since I am not a computer scientist, just a hobbyist. I look forward to all the improvements in computers, but I don’t always like them. An example is Windows 11. The internals seem okay, but the interface leaves me with a lot to desire. Let me give you an example. On Windows 10 one could move an app right to the task bar. That is the area which is either at the bottom of the screen or somewhere else you put it. On Windows 11 you have to go through a couple of steps which you have to learn just to move an app there. Why take something easy to do and make it harder?
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