It is undeniable that today we have many advantages when using computers that we simply did not have 30, 20 or even 10 years ago. Beyond faster processors, larger memory and more portable machines, everything in consumer technology seems to improve without exception; however, there are many things –especially practical things– that come to be sacrificed in the name of innovation. Here we will tell you about 5 aspects in which the computers of the past far surpassed the current ones.
You should not be surprised by such a statement, as there are many reasons why a computer user, especially in the 80’s, was a little happier than today, mainly because back then there were no inconveniences or problems that we had to adopt due to new technology, paradigm, etc.
It is worth mentioning that many of the reasons that we will share in this top are already a thing of the past, although it is almost impossible for them to return in the future, since the demands of today’s common user require implements (such as hard drives) that are currently essential. . Despite this, it is good to look back to see how much we have lost in the user experience and what we could recover in the future.
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Contents
5 Reasons Old Computers Were Better
1. Less data lost
If you got to use one of the first personal computers back in the 80s, you probably remember that hard drives back then were a luxury and not even necessary to run a PC. Well, this entailed an obvious advantage, since all our important information could be stored on external floppy disks that were much less defenseless against sudden system crashes as happens with optical hard drives. In practice, if your computer crashed, your operating system crashed, or something like that, your files and data would always be safe on a floppy disk, which was the common place you would keep them.
2. They lit up faster
This may seem inconceivable if you used any of the early computers Windows, but if we go a little further back, we will notice that there was a time when computers turned on just like a lamp does. It was only enough to press a button for the operating system and the screen to show the interface ready to work. Of course, this was possible in the years when PCs came with BASIC as the main system. This used to be installed on a ROM chip within the same board, so its startup was a matter of seconds. With the rise of hard drives and the operating systems installed on them, things changed.
3. Faster installs
Another obvious cause that is separated from the floppy disks themselves. Like files, programs and commercial applications used to be distributed through this storage medium. Sometimes it was just enough to insert it into the reading slot and wait for it to load into RAM (a much faster process than copying it to a hard drive) to be able to use it as long as we want.
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4. Better manuals
In the 1980s, the contest to dominate the personal computer industry was still in a diffuse stage. It was the pre-Windows era and aside from IBM PC compatible computers, there was no standard for the common user to follow. That is why each manufacturer took pains to present a complete product, ready to use and above all easy to operate. This meant that buying a PC was an event, since they arrived as ready as the consoles and, of course, with great manuals that taught us everything from programming to solving the most common problems.
5. Better customer service
The above reason also carried over to customer service. Brands like Atari, Commodore and others had pretty popular platforms, and while customer service wasn’t always available worldwide, it was much better than what we have now, with different manufacturers for every component our PC might have. Nowadays, if something goes wrong, the companies are most likely to blame each other and recommend us to contact others stating that the failures may be caused by another device.