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I updated my computer history table, because it goes out of date too quickly.

I've used a multiple of machines over my lifetime, some were pretty ordinary, and some were more special than others, it's the special ones I want to document and focus on.

I also never would have thought that I would be holding on to my old 486\Pentium(s) in the year 2024, but they have become more special as time moves on, the snapshot aspect of what the primary paradigm was at the time is what I aim to capture and preserve. - You could say I am a bit of a retro geek.

It used to be (when I started with computers), that 64 MB of ram was top of the line (around the turn of the millennium, think back to `97), then I jumped to 512 MB of ram mid XP era (around 2006), (later 2 GB) then my big upgrade in 2010 for Windows 7, starting with 4 GB and later 8GB, but that's only the memory, there were other factors such as the CPU speed and drive space, I also held on to my Windows 7 box long into its twilight and I was dragged kicking and screaming into the Windows 10 era. Now with Windows 11 on the horizon (and I'm reluctant to embrace it).

My current main desktop has 64GB of Ram a core i9 something something, and a *high-end graphics card*, the details of which can be found in post 66. , wow, that computer is already 5 years old and I'm getting shit on for its age! And it can't run Windows 11, (no TPM) oh well.

I've contemplated about removing my computer history table entirely in favour of a timeline list, similar to what I have on the "mah gear" page on twitch, to highlight just the important systems. (the ones I use for gaming)

Another short coming of this is that it only focuses on PCs, that is, your bulk standard x86 box, I've been using a MacBook in some circumstances and that uses ARM, should I also take note of that? - What about those Raspberry Pi's, they have been fun to hack code on.

And I've had a few laptops over the years, both for school and work, my current HP ProBook G9 is a piece of shit, constantly over heating with unsolvable Bluetooth issues, total junk compared to its predecessor, a HP ProBook G5, but that had its own issues. - before that, I had a Dell Latitude, I want to say it was an E6540, but it's gone to e-Waste now, should I have held onto it? - it wasn't mine to begin with, so I would have had to buy it off the company that I worked for, and that opens up another can of worms regarding warranty, so it's probably for the best, but still, that thing was a tank and super repairable.

Believe it or not, I got rid of that Dell Inspiron 3000 x510404au 15-inch notebook (from post 35) and regressed back to that Compaq Presario C700, that was also a piece of shit with Vista but ran competently with Windows 7 and later Linux, plus an SSD upgrade, so I only retired that thing in 2021 when I bought a new MacBook on a whim, and I deeply appreciated the weight reduction when back packing through Europe or the subsequent tech conferences that I keep getting dragged to in the city. its slim profile makes it ideal for use on a moving train or aeroplane, and more recently I spent the better half of a cruise curled up with it at a pizza bar smashing down diet coke and writing\running little random code experiments. (so, it's even been on a boat!) - But this isn't a travel blog (at least not yet), I've never really had a set theme for this blog, but I guess you could say the focus is now on the developer journey...

So, what benefit is there to documenting my silicon body count? I'm a nerd at heart, and something I like to go back to revisit old games or old software and see how things were, sometimes I've needed to dig my old XP machine out of storage to recompile old projects (yes, VM's are great for this).

What about all of the phones that I've had over the years? (Do mobile phones have feelings?), foolishly I sent some blackberries to e-waste not too long ago, and its only now I have the urge to experience it as a development platform, I am sure there's always an emulator, but nothing beats real hardware for testing.

Nokia also had a lot of different models, (I'd need to look at pictures to find mine), and I think the paradigm at the time was to use a Java SDK of some sort, there is curiosity to understand how it all works, this is before we even get to android.

I've also got a few PalmPilot's in storage somewhere (seen in post 62), and one or two TI graphing calculators, shown in a deleted post from back when this website first started and I posted a lot of crap, some so bad it wasn't worth saving when I re-branded a few years in, I don't usually delete stuff but it was probably due to inaccuracies in the accompanying text.

So now I understand the reasoning for why I want to retire this section of my website.

My approach before I do anything I take a snapshot or a backup of how things were, I made a copy, so if you still want to see how things were you can access it here, and the new version will take over the old link, here.