Things that you DON'T miss from "the good ol' days".

[heyheybooboo]

VRML was awesome though. Cosmo and Blaxxun for Netscrape hehe.
Also Superscape Viscape was another VR from over ten years ago.

Those have mostly been replaced with things like Second Life which is nothing more than a 3D sex chat room. D:

How could I have missed that? Anyway, I'm too old to add 'Sex Offender' to my resume ---

22 characters per display line (TRS-80), 5.25" floppies

Dang those new-fangled floppys and their 100 Kb/s transfer rates!




--

 

[somethingsketchy]

1. Saving freshman H.S. papers on a floppy disk and then the disk would get corrupted as soon as you went to retrieve the file(s) at a later time.

2. CRT monitors and the headache you would get if you used them for too long

3. Defragmenting a HDD in Windows 98, talk about deathly slow

4. Using the Internet on dial-up for school research, email or any other common task.

5. Poor quality online video (yah for 720p/1080p/HD video)

6. Non-ergonomic keyboards

7. Poor case design (how did components ever stay cool back then)

8. Buying from an online retailer...just about buy anything nowadays

 

[CurseTheSky]

Buying components before they became "sexy." It sounds stupid, but I don't think I could go back to buying an "enthusiast-level" graphics card or motherboard with a boring green PCB, no fancy heatsinks, and no enticing graphics. Even looking back at my old 6800 GT or 7900 GS, they look so plain in comparison to the graphics cards readily available today.

Now it's not just a matter of opening the box, unwrapping the component, and installing it; I find myself turning it over in my hands a couple of times to marvel at the design. It's interesting, at least.

 

[alfa147x]

Realplayer
Just to open:

RealAudio (*.ra, *.rm), RealVideo (*.rv, *.rm, *.rmvb), RealPix (*.rp), RealText (*.rt), RealMedia Shortcut (*.ram, *.rmm)

 

[goobernoodles]

The computer lighting fad... LED fans, cold cathodes... etc. Suppose that hasn't really died yet.

The color beige.

Those clunky glare guards/filters.

Anything serial.

56k porn. lol

 

[Demon-Xanth]

Regarding online videos:

...the codecs, god... not the codecs!

 

[40Hands]

I still remember the sound my 3.5 and 5.25 drives made when the computer started!

Damn this thread brings back memories! As much of a pain in the ass a lot of this was, It really got me into computers. I wanted to play games back in the day and the only way to do it was to learn how to install and configure them.

 

[Rubycon]

Realplayer
Just to open:

RealAudio (*.ra, *.rm), RealVideo (*.rv, *.rm, *.rmvb), RealPix (*.rp), RealText (*.rt), RealMedia Shortcut (*.ram, *.rmm)

buffering...buffering...bufferingggg! Alrighty then! The damn thing is not going to play! Stupid dancing baby was NEVER worth the wait.

Oh yeah that stupid dancing baby! :biggrin:

"Schizo Dog" was funnier.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjaNwXm0MIg

 

[alfa147x]

buffering...buffering...bufferingggg! Alrighty then! The damn thing is not going to play! Stupid dancing baby was NEVER worth the wait.

Oh yeah that stupid dancing baby! :biggrin:

"Schizo Dog" was funnier.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjaNwXm0MIg

The dancing baby was THE thing back in the days.
I remember I was like 11 or something and I would go over to indian get togethers and at about 8 of them these people would show it to EVERYONE and they thought it was the shit!

 

[HannibalX]

Memory managers.

 

[dtgoodwin]

Lack of integrated NIC and modem on laptops. Trying to get the right drivers for PC Card slots, and corresponding PC Card NICS and Modems (pre XP). Oh, and the dongles that would get lost, or the connector broken because it protruded from the side of the laptop waiting to get broken.

Agree with everyone above, SO glad to be rid of jumpers and IRQ issues. I remember spending hours trying to figure out how to disable com port 2 on an ISA card that I didn't have documentation to just to get my 14.4 modem to work.

 

[Rubycon]

Single pass parallel port scanners. I think I could sketch faster.

 

[floogy]

External parallel port 100mb zip drive. One of the only options for anything bigger than 1.44mb I had at the time. Slow and expensive.

 

[HeXen]

lol, kids. anyway
What i dont miss is rotary phones, no internet, soft floppies, TRS-80's, Corteroy pants, VHS rewinding and Sammy Terry

 

[blackangst1]

lol, kids. anyway
What i dont miss is rotary phones, no internet, soft floppies, TRS-80's, Corteroy pants, VHS rewinding and Sammy Terry

(I agree lol)

I dont miss the old BBS boards. God how I love usenet now

 

[Rubycon]

Oh yes how could I have forgotten the rotary phone!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuGgDMYW7tg&

 

[ghouck]

I don't miss those keyboard-intercept type of gaming controllers. I'm typing away when the kid decides to start playing with it, and what I'm typing looks like this:

Dear gggggggggggggggggggggggggggffffffffffffffjfjjfjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjfjfjfjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjsfsfsfllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll
ddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd
Sirs,

Also not missed:
Windows 3.1's whopping 1-file trash bin.
Screwing up your video card drivers and having to re-install the OS because you can't see to fix it.
Those mainboards with PCI and Vesa-local buses on them, which caused countless compatibility issues.
CDRoms where you had to put the disc in the cartridge and insert the cartridge into it.
Just the stupid plastic boxes everyone had for their floppies.
AOHell. . .
AOHell floppies in the mail
AOHell CDs in the mail
Ram Risers
That stupid 'flying toasters' screensaver after the first billion times seeing it
People that acted as if they were elite because THEY used WFW 3.11

 

[Candymancan21]

Things i dont miss are

1. Windows 98/95, terrible OS'S that would blue screen like crazy.
2. Drivers... The driver ritual on older OS's drove me crazy..
3. Slow ass internet
4. Crappy ass cpu's that had no heatspreader to protect the core from chipping or burning out.
5. Overclocking was alot more complicated
6. Did i mention how much i hated windows 95 and 98 ? And drivers and software..


Thank god for Vista, and windows 7 and xp in later versions... It makes life so much easier. No more windows reformatt's every damn week or month..

 

[yhelothar]

waiting an hour to download a 5MB shitty pr0n clip but it was sooo good.

 

[biostud]

x-wing(or any other reasonable game): 30 floppy discs.

Only to get this message "Error reading drive A:" "sector not found" "Abort, Retry, Fail" on disc 30