It’s been a pretty mild winter here in Bend so far. It’s Dec 12th and there really hasn’t been much snow at all. Mt Bachelor, my local mountain, was supposed to have their opening day on November 28th. They had to postpone. This was expected because it is the first year I decided to purchase a season pass. Just my luck.

Anyway, it’s been overcast here a lot lately. Dreary days inspire me to fill my down-time with indoor things around the house. Cleaning, organizing, decorating, fixing. Even though we purchased a new construction home, I’ve been re-caulking our windows inside because things tend to settle with big temperature fluctuations throughout the seasons. When that happens, it usually means cracks. Well, it means cracks if the original builders didn't use high-flex caulk. I hate cracks.

In addition to caulking windows, doing paint touch-ups, installing better faucets in the guest bathrooms (why did any manufacturer ever think waterfall faucets were a good idea?!), I’ve also been going through our closets and storage bins. We’ve accumulated quite a few old electronic devices and a birds nest of charging cables.

During my clean-out, I found some older phones we would use for international travel as well as some other devices. As I was rummaging through all this stuff, it got me thinking about the whole range of electronic devices I encountered growing up.

Computers

One of the earliest ones I can remember is the classic desktop computer. My mom would sometimes take me to work when I was a kid and I vaguely remember this computer she used. After going down some Wikipedia rabbit holes, it seems like the most-likely culprit for around that time period would have been the IBM MPC 1600.

I distinctly recall the yellow-amber text and the function keys used primarily for activating menus.

The next experience with computers I remember was with the typical early 90’s home desktop. This was a class of computer that commanded its own desk and hutch in the middle of your home so that everyone could use—erm—fight over it.

I remember my uncle, who was a software developer at the time, always had the most elaborate computer and monitor setups—mostly all custom built. I don’t remember much else about them, only that I knew I wanted to grow up and do whatever he was doing so I could have a similarly elaborate setup.

If you grew up with these also, you’ll remember it was the kind of computer that made a million different little beeps, boops, clicks, and revving fan sounds when it would start, attempt to run a program, connect to the internet via 56k dial-up, and sometimes for no apparent reason. They just seemed like devices that were mad that electricity was coursing through their components.

Those sounds coming from a computer in today’s day and age would be 100% unnerving.

I think our first computer model was a Hewlitt-Packard of some kind running Windows 95. Something that looked like this:

We had a few different models over the years after that first one but I don’t really remember much about them. However, I do remember that it took forever to do anything, so I never spent much time on them because I just didn’t have the patience, and there weren’t many programs to keep me interested.

The only thing that eventually did keep me interested later was chatting to my friends on AOL, downloading music and burning CD’s, designing music show flyers, and making websites. But, I think that actually requires a whole separate post along with all software and websites of that time period. There were some real gems.

Music

I eventually got pulled further into the music scene playing guitar in bands and continuing to buy and burn CDs. Of course, I needed a way to play those CDs as loud as I wanted when my parents weren’t home, which brings me to the next nostalgic piece of technology: the home CD player with speakers (aka boombox).

These things had physical buttons, dials, equalizer sliders, graphic displays, and some models could hold upwards of 100 CDs. Going to any store that sold these would almost always yield a full aisle of different models which were plugged in. This was the perfect opportunity for people to ‘test’ out the max volume and just disappear to another aisle. Allegedly. Those were fun times.

Not only did I need to listen to music at home, I needed to listen to it on the go. Cue the portable music players.

First the classic Sony Walkman CD player. The only way these improved over the years was selling slightly better non-skip versions (yes, CDs used to skip if you moved them the wrong way or hit a bump while listening to a song).

Then came the portable mini-disc players…

When I turned 16 and got my first car it didn’t have a CD player in it, so this needed to be resolved quickly.

Same story with these aftermarket CD players as with the boomboxes: stores that had an automotive department had walls of these. And same story with the max volume testing.

I installed this Pioneer with famous animated dolphin graphic.

Phones

Around this same time cell phones and game consoles started to have their moment. This era had some of the weirdest cell phone designs ever. Looking back, I actually owned quite a few that I kind of wish I still had in my possession.

The classic Nokia 3310.

The Nextel i870 with Push-to-Talk functionality that essentially made the phone a long-distance walkie-talkie. The antenna also extended out of the phone which was kinda neat I guess?

My first PDA, a PalmOne Trēo. This one was fun because it came with a built-in stylus.

Eventually, I upgraded to the Palm Pre 2, which was actually pretty revolutionary for it's time, in terms of the PalmOS UI. It was also ultra tiny when completely closed which made it super pocketable.

I wasn't a fan of the first Sidekicks but when this one came out, I finally thought I should give it a go. The novelty wore off super quick and I hated it.

I ditched my sidekick for the HTC G1. I really enjoyed this phone, although it did have some quirks.

Then the iPhone 4. Arguably the perfectly-sized phone.

Then the Pixel 2XL. Beautiful on the outside but the software experience was pretty meh.

After all that I pretty much went back to the iPhone with a Pixel for international travel.

Looking back at all this technology, it's interesting to to see just how much we had to rely on physical buttons because the UI capabilities to display information or directly interact just wasn't there yet. I kind of miss it.

I feel like we've swung a little too far in the opposite direction. These objects had personality and character whereas now everything is so homogenous—everything is just a screen. It's kinda boring and it typically just takes longer to complete tasks.

It's quite funny how a cloudy, seemingly boring day of chores can unexpectedly send you down memory lane.

Thanks for stopping by! Do you remember anything weird, interesting, or cool from that period? Drop me a line and let me know!