My how times have changed

I just ordered a new Macbook air for my office. I needed a computer that was portable so I could take it with me to give talks. One of the perks of going to Montreal last weekend was that I received an nice honorarium, and it will cover the cost of the new Macbook air. 

The new 11 inch Macbook air is an amazing piece of technology. It comes with 128GB of flash drive storage (new technology), 4GB of Ram and a processor that runs at 1.6 GHz. I know it doesn't compare in speed and storage with a Macbook pro or even my iMac, but it is micro thin and only weighs 2.3 lbs. 

Marveling at the technology, I was taken back to my first computer, the Atari 400.

I bought it in 1982 (Diana was a baby), it was an 8-bit machine and had 8 KB of RAM. No that is not a typo, RAM only came in KB. A KB is 1000 less than a MB, which is 1000 less than a GB. So my new Macbook air will have 4 million times more RAM than the Atari. It also will be a 64 bit machine vs 8 bit. The Atari 400 did not have any storage (ie disk drive). Everything was contained in RAM. You plugged in cartridges which contained your whole program/game. It plugged into the T.V. No LED screens back then.

Another classic from my past was the Atari 130xe. I purchased this in 1985 when we were living in Riverbend in the townhouse (now we had Diana and Angela). This computer had a whopping 128 KB of RAM. Still millions less than the Macbook air, but at least you could connect a 5 1/4" floppy drive for storage. I had purchased a word processing program and used it to write one of my research papers. But the computer's RAM could only hold about 4 pages of text, so I had to save different parts of the paper as "chapters." But the amazing technology of word processing was wonderful. No more typewriter for me. I even had a dot matrix printer!

Next up was the Zenith Eazy-PC

This baby had a 20 MB hard drive. No more switching floppy disks between your program disk and data disk. Just think that whole hard drive would probably hold about 20 digital pictures!

Afterwards came a series of IBM clones, each with increasing computing power. Then came the magic of the internet and later the digital world (vs analog), etc. I know in time my Macbook air will be obsolete, but for now I just want to say one thing....I love progress (and Steve Jobs).