Computer During College? Not Me

With the new iMac and Magic Mouse announced today from Apple, I took a moment to think of computers from the past and realized that I actually never had a computer during college. That is unthinkable today, and I can officially chalk up that I am one old dude!

Back when I went to Kutztown university, I was one of the lucky ones fortunate enough to have a Brother word processor that clanked out 5-page reports in about 20 minutes and featured a tiny black display with bright yellow text. Sure, we had a computer lab in the library with about 25 Apple computers, but there was always a line or a wait and we hardly knew how to use those damn things back then.

My first computer was an bondi blue iMac, the first iMac that was ever released, back in 1998 I believe. My friend John Roberts hooked me up with Photoshop 4.0 and something called Dreamweaver and I was well on my way into the murky confusion of table based web design, and then the eventual dreaded “DHTML”. I clearly remember designing sites that stated “Click Here for Internet Explorer or Click Here for Netscape Navigator”.

In celebration of the past, here’s a look at some old school computers and diligent workers: