On 2021-03-16 2:37 p.m., Graham wrote:
> On 2021-03-16 8:38 a.m., Dave Smith wrote:
three laptops.
>>
> I have kept all the old computers as they were replaced by newer
> technology. Thus I have one desktop in use and 3 old ones in the
> basement. The oldest is a 486!!
> I'm glad I kept them as the government wanted data and charts that were
> prepared for them and saved originally on 5.25" floppies. I used 2 of
> those old machines to transfer the data to memory sticks and
> subsequently updated the charts using specialist software.
> I have a 17" XP laptop which cannot be updated and the battery doesn't
> hold a charge for long. However, the software it runs for my Garmin is
> obsolete and can't be updated so I keep it going just to record my
> biking activities.

Sometimes I wish I had kept my old ones. I started off with a COCO II,
then an XT. I upgraded the XT to and AT. The next one was a Pentium, and
now I am on my third one.

As for laptops, I got my first one, an HP about 10 1/2 years ago. It
died after few years ago and was replaced by a refurbished HP, After a
couple years the Wifi on that crapped out so bought a Toshiba. It was
getting pretty slow and Wifi performance was getting intolerable so I
replaced that one.

One thing I did keep was an unopened box of single sided single density
360K 5 1/4" floppy discs. IIRC they were $10.99, about the same price as
a 16 gig USB stick.

I remember that the 20 meg HD on the XT was $420, My latest desktop
with a 480gig SSD was $425.