Let's take a Nostalgic trip to the past

[Misanthrope]

So today instead of playing a few levels of Badlands and Bad Piggies while doing my daily business I decided to go old school and read a magazine instead, I found a 2005 edition of Computer Shopper! My dad used to be a subscriber (first it was PC World but it gradually became lame so he started buying then subscribing to Computer Shopper instead) and I thought to share a few pictures to see how far we've come and at the same time, not at all having some of the exact same pet peeves and such 9 years later, minus the printers of course.

 

Let's open with a cellphone!

 

Notice how this Samsung phone already had your basic icon layout, this baby was a capable smartphone with 64mb ram and 128mb of storage all in glorious 240*320 resolution. Although I must admit it had one thing I still miss from this era: a foldable, full physical qwerty keyboard.

 

Anyway moving on they of course weren't the only name around:

 

 

This baby was also sporting a full qwerty but what's shocking is the proudly displayed iPAQ name, oooh HP you didn't know how lucky you were to get away with that one!

 

Anyway moving right along

Don't think that those ultrabooks or even the netbooks were a very novel concept, this marvel of technology was a full featured laptop at only 7.2 inches wide....and like 2 inches thick but still!
 

Also you'd be interesting to take a look at this little number:

 

Yep, AMD has been toying around with APU concepts since way before they bought ATI, and for extra shits and giggles companies were already attempting those small cube form factors. Of course back then it was a lot more proprietary since again, PC vendors were a big thing remember that we're talking a transition period were buying magazines to read on PC and tech was still a thing

 

Oh and back then they were not poisoning tek syndicate personnel at trade shows but they were already a recognized name, Newegg!

 

And yes back then we were getting better and better technology but it was not unheard of to carry several devices: one for video, one for mp3s, a digital camera and a web device for dicking around in the bus

 

Now I present you a rant! 

 

 

I feel I need to apologize to Martin Burris since I've been making the exact same argument lately....in 2014...because technology never really changes it seems and there's a long tradition of gimped CPUs and nerds demanding more cycles and power

Speaking of power and the recent Linus comments on his interview today, a PC cooled with vapor chill refrigeration technology.

 

 

To think this 2gb of ram beast could have been yours for only $8,426

[Misanthrope]

Now let's take a look at a monitor

 

A 17" 720p panel, which is sadly not that far away from what we normally use nowadays. It seems like it was a little bit after this era that we completely abandoned LCD resolution upgrades and just lowered the prices, but still back then I remember being amazed at this liquid crystal wondrous items while I was stuck with my massive 17" CTR monitor at 1024*768

 

Now for water cooling enthusiast check this one out

 

Doesn't that reservoir screams awesome? I mean you can put enough gallons on it to replace your car radiator reservoir if it ever breaks down!

[Misanthrope]

A few more, let's take a look at something that appears to be really trendy: Even Linus himself it's pretty exited about the Shield and we're all exited about Steam streaming capabilities but yeah, we sort of tried all that before:

 

 

TV over ethernet baby! Yeah those were the days!

 

Another nice symmetric argument to more modern concerns, apparently even back then we were starting to question digital only media:

 

It's amazing to think that this entire argument of not being ready to move past optical media would be echoed strongly 8 years later with the xbone controversy. 

 

Finally a piece of tech that looks surprisingly similar and it's still commonly used proving that some things stand the test of time:

 

Even vs modern drives this thing at a max of 500gb sorta holds up and if you consider that some cheapo solutions still run on USB 2.0 this is definitely surprising to see on such an old magazine.

Anyways let me know what you think I might upload a couple or more or dig up a few more old magazines next time nature calls!

[juretrn]

dual 7800 GTX? So HARDCORE.  Those cards were just beast. 

[wtfxmitchell]

[cae]

The past? This was like yesterday. 

[jameshumphries47]

love it !

[helping]

holy balls 8k for 7800 SLI, 2GB RAM, two 80GB + 400gb drives

 

you'd probably have to pay to recycle that at this point

[Hans Christian | Teri]

The past? This was like yesterday. 

 

Haha, a thread like this makes me feel really old as well, and I'm only 21.

[jbr]

 my first cell phone was a Motorola brick phone that came with a shoulder strap, next to no coverage, cost a several dollars per minute to use.

[Scia]

<3

 

Found it recently. Still typing faster on it than on a touchscreen or even a keyboard

[cae]

My first cell phone..

 

 

I kinda miss phones with the aesthetics of a Glock.

[orangecat]

Man that stuff isnt even that old its crazy to think we have come to far in such a short time.

[Misanthrope]

Speaking of notable cell phones we used to own, take a look at this one, this was actually my first smart phone I was impressed by the fact that I could emulate NES games here:

 

[Tech_Dreamer]

 

 

 

 

 

a ninja always strikes first

[ShadowCaptain]

I still use this every single day

 

[LogicalDrm]

Nokia 3310 was my first phone. But on PC stuff. I have ad about Compaq PC which is pretty much same as one my family got back in -95. Intel Pentium MMX 200MHz, 32Mt of ram, 4Gt HDD, some gfx card with max resolution of 1024x786. Whole system with monitor, kb&mouse cost 16.5k Finnish marks which is around €2.7k. Thats bit more expensive than what we got. But our machine didn't have gpu... main reason on getting new machine in 2001.

[Misanthrope]

Well in 95 a GPU was really not needed, it wasn't until the late 90s and early 2000s when it became so awesome that it was imperative and not just an expensive card for that cool glquake mode.

[Terosterone]

Wow, to think it's has only been 9 years since the release of that magazine. I think time has just flown by and more and more tech seems to fly by us, it becomes hard to create a "point of reference" (i.e. a specific time or device) to look to.. So, I thank you for this fun exercise. 

Like you said, in one way we haven't moved along that much and in some aspects we are light years ahead (8K for that PC??).

BTW, I noticed there was a 74GB 10,000 RPM hard drive.. What happened to those - did they heat up too fast or something? 

[Misanthrope]

Wow, to think it's has only been 9 years since the release of that magazine. I think time has just flown by and more and more tech seems to fly by us, it becomes hard to create a "point of reference" (i.e. a specific time or device) to look to.. So, I thank you for this fun exercise. 

Like you said, in one way we haven't moved along that much and in some aspects we are light years ahead (8K for that PC??).

BTW, I noticed there was a 74GB 10,000 RPM hard drive.. What happened to those - did they heat up too fast or something? 

 

I think as density increased RPM became less necessary to achieve similar speeds, not only that but a lot more difficult to control (i.e. a big record player needle doesn't needs to be as accurate as a microscopic one)

[Terosterone]

I think as density increased RPM became less necessary to achieve similar speeds, not only that but a lot more difficult to control (i.e. a big record player needle doesn't needs to be as accurate as a microscopic one)

Interesting. I'm learning new stuff every day.

[chilicheeseburger]

Nice. i have tons of old magazines from arround 2004 to 2007 lying around but they're all in german so not much use uploading scans of them here.

And I remember those small cube shaped cases being a thing back then.

[ygohome]

...

 

Finally a piece of tech that looks surprisingly similar and it's still commonly used proving that some things stand the test of time:

 

...

 

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/90677-show-of-your-old-and-retro-computer-parts/?p=1563511

 

ha, yep.  Except the one in my link is even older than the one in the advertisement.

[toms94z71]

This was my first cell phone

[Joshua Ondangan]

I still have that exact same looking maxtor external hdd It's a 300gb the one I have. and yes it's dead.