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oohhboy posted:Getting 5 years out of computers isn't bad at all. Worth the premium in a high damage environment? Probably not without some care plan as 95% of the stuff can be done on something like Chromebook without dealing with Windows. And no, AppleCare or whatever didn't really help matters much since it was not that different from what you'd get yourself. Chromebooks being worth half a drat really changed the game. This all reminded me that my middle school got IBMs my 7th grade year and they had OS/2 Warp on them for some reason lol.
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Aug 16, 2019 05:24
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I've been seeing Chromebooks moving into the educational space around here, too. At this point they are really capable, and for my own use being able to install Linux apps has made mine a totally reasonable laptop replacement. Unfortunately Google's End of Life policies on Chromebooks are not entirely clear, so it's possible it could get obsoleted at some point. If that happens I hope I could throw a lightweight Linux distro on it, but would rather not have to. https://www.pcworld.com/article/3109868/why-google-plans-to-stop-supporting-your-chromebook-after-five-years.html Still, according to the chart, I'm good until June 2021 at this point. https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/6220366?hl=en
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Aug 16, 2019 06:23
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FilthyImp posted:This all reminded me that my middle school got IBMs my 7th grade year and they had OS/2 Warp on them for some reason lol. That seems like great security through obscurity, none of the kids would have had any idea how to bypass the restrictions right? Next you're going to tell me the administrators didn't know how to set up restrictions.
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Aug 16, 2019 06:36
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In elementary school it was all Macintoshes. Each classroom always had a "bad" one that froze all the time.
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Aug 16, 2019 06:44
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Every school has a few cursed devices that just never work right.
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Aug 16, 2019 06:47
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It is your moral duty to put the cursed device out of its misery.
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Aug 16, 2019 06:52
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My elementary school had a couple TRS-80s. With tape drives!
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Aug 16, 2019 08:24
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Up to when I was about 14, the RM Nimbus seemed to be the computer of choice for my local education authority. It looked like a PC, it ran a version of DOS, but it wasn't quite PC compatible (and apparently it's one of the few computers that used the 80186). My school had a computer room with about fifteen of them in as well as the odd one scattered around in classrooms. On reflection, having a whole school using 186 based PCs through the early to mid 90s was perhaps a bit odd.
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Aug 16, 2019 08:24
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CaptainSarcastic posted:My elementary school had a couple TRS-80s. With tape drives! My first computer was a TRS -80 with a cassette player (Realistic) Loading a program from the tape recorder meant fiddling with the volume dial to get it to actually load
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Aug 16, 2019 08:40
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I remember a New York blackout level of looting one day in HS. The IT Department were simply cleaning out a bunch of storage rooms to reorganise and shelf a load of computer gear. Their great idea was to put all the computer gear onto our backpack shelves in the hallway. Traditionally this was the sign that anyone can grab whatever old monitor or keyboard IT didn't want anymore. They lost quite a lot of expensive equipment in a few minutes when we got out of classes in another building and noticed. I remember a tower with a CD Burner which made me 'that kid who could pirate games and porn' - $30 a CD-R plus BYO Disc.
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Aug 16, 2019 09:23
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Buttcoin purse posted:That seems like great security through obscurity, none of the kids would have had any idea how to bypass the restrictions right? Next you're going to tell me the administrators didn't know how to set up restrictions. My friends and I didn't really find anything in there and there weren't compatible games so we just thought it was odd and went back to Carmageddon.
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Aug 16, 2019 09:30
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FilthyImp posted:Carmageddon. Ah, the soundtrack was/is mint! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0Q7yaDqLqs
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Aug 16, 2019 10:50
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Humphreys posted:Ah, the soundtrack was/is mint! FF rules
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Aug 16, 2019 11:11
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Fil5000 posted:Up to when I was about 14, the RM Nimbus seemed to be the computer of choice for my local education authority. It looked like a PC, it ran a version of DOS, but it wasn't quite PC compatible (and apparently it's one of the few computers that used the 80186). My school had a computer room with about fifteen of them in as well as the odd one scattered around in classrooms. On reflection, having a whole school using 186 based PCs through the early to mid 90s was perhaps a bit odd. My school was exactly the same. They were just starting to replace the Nimbuses when I left in 1996.
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Aug 16, 2019 11:32
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Man, I love the mega thicc chunky keyboards like that. I bet it makes an extremely loud and very satisfying click when you press a key. Would love to have something like that at my office today...
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Aug 16, 2019 11:47
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Cartoon Man posted:Man, I love the mega thicc chunky keyboards like that. I bet it makes an extremely loud and very satisfying click when you press a key. Would love to have something like that at my office today... The keyboard isn't chunky; that's the computer.
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Aug 16, 2019 11:52
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Cartoon Man posted:Man, I love the mega thicc chunky keyboards like that. I bet it makes an extremely loud and very satisfying click when you press a key. Would love to have something like that at my office today... 
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Aug 16, 2019 11:57
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LifeSunDeath posted:FF rules Saw them Live, was very disappointed unfortunately
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Aug 16, 2019 11:58
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Cartoon Man posted:Man, I love the mega thicc chunky keyboards like that. I bet it makes an extremely loud and very satisfying click when you press a key. Would love to have something like that at my office today... I brought in an extra clicky mechanical keyboard to the office. One day. I thought I was going to get murdered in the parking lot.
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Aug 16, 2019 12:06
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Bargearse posted:At most of the schools I've worked at, they're either all Lenovo 11e laptops with a Department of Education custom image or iPads in rugged cases, but ChromeOS devices are really starting to catch on in Australian schools. Dunno what state you're in but in NSW at least the current contract is with HP and has been for the last 4 years or so. The basic laptops and desktops are alright for most things but cannot do anything CAD to save themselves. For that theres a high teir computer that will run Autodesk products as long as you don't push them too hard with rendering and the like. Being that I mostly teach CAD and other engineering technologies my biggest struggle is with the computer that runs the laser cutter as that bastard chugs everytime I open up docs with Illustrator to output to the laser cutter.
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Aug 16, 2019 12:18
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A good number of years after I left my elementary school, the IT guy got fired because somebody discovered his "tech graveyard". A room packed floor to ceiling with millions of dollars worth of new in box complete PCs, motherboards, hard drives, etc. that had been purchased over the decades and then hidden instead of being used for anything. The classrooms had been using 1980s computers well into the late 90s because the IT guy simply didn't want to have to do anything. He got away with so many years of not installing anything and saying that he did because there was so little record keeping going on. I ended up getting a bunch of brand new Model M keyboards and cool old monitors for a few bucks when the school finally dumped everything. If anyone wants to get murdered by their co-workers, Unicomp still makes Model M keyboards with buckling spring switches.
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Aug 16, 2019 12:21
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That dude lived the dream.
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Aug 16, 2019 12:25
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Carth Dookie posted:That dude lived the dream. Being a piece of poo poo who made students use antiquated computers because he was too lazy?
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Aug 16, 2019 12:27
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big crush on Chad OMG posted:Being a piece of poo poo who made students use antiquated computers because he was too lazy? and getting paid for it.
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Aug 16, 2019 12:28
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Sweevo posted:My school was exactly the same. They were just starting to replace the Nimbuses when I left in 1996. I was in a county that still had a middle school -> upper school system, so my middle school still had the Nimbuses when Ieft in 94 (as well as one "multimedia" pc with a 386, Soundblaster and a CD ROM drive), but the upper school had actual modern stuff like 486 DX/2s on an actual network instead of RM's weird proprietary thing.
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Aug 16, 2019 12:31
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Carth Dookie posted:and getting paid for it. As long as you get paid it’s ok to be a scumbag, an extremely hot take from forums poster Carth Dookie
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Aug 16, 2019 13:13
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A FUCKIN CANARY!! posted:If anyone wants to get murdered by their co-workers, Unicomp still makes Model M keyboards with buckling spring switches. Nice, only $105 for a new 122-key keyboard! I'd like to just use one of my old ones somehow, in the '90s I replaced the terminal connector on one with an AT keyboard connector and it mostly worked under Linux, but I don't think an AT-to-PS/2 adapter and PS/2-to-USB adapter work with it.
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Aug 16, 2019 13:22
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Buttcoin purse posted:Nice, only $105 for a new 122-key keyboard! I'd like to just use one of my old ones somehow, in the '90s I replaced the terminal connector on one with an AT keyboard connector and it mostly worked under Linux, but I don't think an AT-to-PS/2 adapter and PS/2-to-USB adapter work with it. e: Oh, I'm dumb.
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Aug 16, 2019 13:26
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Dr. Garbanzo posted:Dunno what state you're in but in NSW at least the current contract is with HP and has been for the last 4 years or so. The basic laptops and desktops are alright for most things but cannot do anything CAD to save themselves. For that theres a high teir computer that will run Autodesk products as long as you don't push them too hard with rendering and the like. Being that I mostly teach CAD and other engineering technologies my biggest struggle is with the computer that runs the laser cutter as that bastard chugs everytime I open up docs with Illustrator to output to the laser cutter. I’m in Victoria. Here, schools have quite a bit of latitude in what they can do. The Department has contracts with HP for the workstations used by admin staff, contracts with Acer for Department-provided notebooks, Cisco for wireless LANs, and with Telstra for the VicSmart fibre WAN that connects schools together and provides internet connections. There’s the Technical Support for Schools Program which contracts with various providers to put IT people in schools and keeps me employed, but outside of that, so long as the right procedures are followed for purchasing hardware and software, privacy assessments are done for provisioning cloud services, and all the right documentation is kept, schools can more or less do what they like for IT. It’s all part of a program called eduSTAR that schools can opt out of if they really want but then they miss out on a ton of support and free gear from the Department. Cartoon Man posted:Man, I love the mega thicc chunky keyboards like that. I bet it makes an extremely loud and very satisfying click when you press a key. Would love to have something like that at my office today... Unfortunately not, Commodore keyboards tend to be a little mushy. That’s an Amiga 1200 from 1992, last of the great wedge-shaped home microcomputers. I mean, it had fantastic graphics and sound for its day but using it you can see why the wedge form factor fell out of use. Bargearse has a new favorite as of 14:39 on Aug 16, 2019 |
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Aug 16, 2019 14:34
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Aug 16, 2019 14:43
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My elemantary school computer lab was all some version of those old white Power Macs that sucked poo poo for like the first few years in school. They upgraded the computer lab to Bondi Blue iMac G3s in 2000 or so, those at least worked. They dumped 1 old PowerMac in each classroom as a spare computer. This was also the time when you needed to bring a floppy disc with you as part of your school supplies because our school was too cheap for any network storage. In High School and University everything was Windows for me at least. My wife had to buy her own MacBook when she went to Media/Journalism school because every program they use is Mac-based.
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Aug 16, 2019 15:36
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Bargearse posted:My primary school had two of those on wheeled carts that would be moved around to the classrooms as needed, they kept on using those well into the nineties. Cedar Rapids, Iowa schools used the IIe until '96-'97. The things were used concurrently with the 486's that replaced them. They were already starting to turn yellow by that time. One of those became my first computer in 1995 or so. My mother was a teacher's assistant and worked through the summers deep cleaning the library and computer lab. We're talking flats of duster, popping the key covers off any applicable keyboard, sometimes pulling cases apart to clear fans. Two summers in a row they let her take an Apple home for "training purposes" (read: letting us play games and generally gently caress around with it). My father moved out of a temp position and into permanent employment at Parson's Technologies by learning to use, you guessed it, the Apple IIe in the mail-room by having one at home. That started a whole new career that he's close to retiring from. Those little machines served us well!
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Aug 16, 2019 16:28
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Hells yeah, I remember that DariusLikewise posted:white Power Macs. uhhhh
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Aug 16, 2019 16:48
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Steve Jobs had a lot of hobbies
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Aug 16, 2019 16:55
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I used to dig around inside applications with Resedit on the mac. Changing icons, dialog box strings, that kind of thing. Weirdest thing I ever found was in Word (5.1 probably), some resource that contained the ACII string "Family is either a blessing or a curse" (wording may be a little off but thats the gist) but written backwards. I don't remember the nature of the resource that contained it, but I could never figure out why that was there, if it was supposed to be an easter egg that one could reveal somehow or what. Resedit provided me hours of fun though. Probably my third favorite mac game of the time, behind Simcity and Photoshop.
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Aug 16, 2019 17:00
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Kidpics for life E: kidpics is definitely not a name that would fly in 2019 lol
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Aug 16, 2019 17:14
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I remember an old program on Macs that we did a ton of schoolwork on back in like 97-2000. It was kind of like Powerpoint where you had slides and could add buttons to jump around to different slides. It had canned clipart, wipe effects and sounds as well. We used to just use it to make CYOA things. Does anyone remember that?
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Aug 16, 2019 17:41
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DariusLikewise posted:I remember an old program on Macs that we did a ton of schoolwork on back in like 97-2000. It was kind of like Powerpoint where you had slides and could add buttons to jump around to different slides. It had canned clipart, wipe effects and sounds as well. We used to just use it to make CYOA things. Does anyone remember that? Hypercard? It was out well before those years, but could be described like that. edit: Worthnoting, the inventor of hypercard was *this* close to inventing the web. He had the hyperlinks, but they just switched between local cards in the deck. edit the second: On the version of hypercard that used to ship with macs, functionality was limited because they wanted you to buy it. But if you typed MAGIC on one of the cards in the demo deck, it unlocked all of the tools. Flash Gordon Ramsay has a new favorite as of 17:48 on Aug 16, 2019 |
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Aug 16, 2019 17:45
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DariusLikewise posted:I remember an old program on Macs that we did a ton of schoolwork on back in like 97-2000. It was kind of like Powerpoint where you had slides and could add buttons to jump around to different slides. It had canned clipart, wipe effects and sounds as well. We used to just use it to make CYOA things. Does anyone remember that? Was it Hypercard? I don't know if it was that, but we had what you described on the school computers. It was fun as hell.
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Aug 16, 2019 17:45
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Jim Silly-Balls posted:Kidpics for life I once found a whole box of KidPix floppy disks while cleaning up a school server room.
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