All of my computer stuff is Computational !!
Computational threads for me include checking for interesting things in today’s endless online world of the web & for the daily use of my delightfully fast new HP Envy PC that sits on my home office desk, allowing me to work on my tree and other stuff!!
I do so love getting to eView the world (well, when I’m not out & about, enjoying Mother Nature, or relaxing in my Yard!!) using our super-fast WiFi connection that surrounds my home (securely linked into my cable system, which does have a monthly expense!) where visuals on my screen at all hours of the day & night vary from boring stuff to stunning thoughts!
I operate my desktop computer with a large-screen LCD-TV as the monitor (which I can switch to my PS4 game device) which runs from the HP Envy with the very high-speed GeForce RTX TI board, a simple keyboard & mouse, the HDD system (an internal 2-tByte & an external 6-tByte) drives, which are partitioned into multiple actual drives: System, Work, Storage, Backups etc
I also use the professional Office tools for writing, coding, calculating, etc in highly sophisticated ways, saving the work to my folders and online pages (like this one) or heading it off to places like social media or to my gMail, printing relevant reports or records (for storage) on my online WiFi Brother printer or to PDF files… have been doing this since the early 80’s!!
These are all under the control of my 64-bit professional version of Windows 11 where a dual-boot can allow me to run under Win-7 or Linux, each for administrative backups, etc
With several PCs prior to today’s update (November, 2023), I purchased my very 1st PC with the startup of my Creative Logic Software, LLC business in 1985 as a $3,500 deductible expense… the IBM PC lived in my office, connected to a dial-up 2400 BPS modem, pretty fast for those days!!
To compare some interesting threads, a text monitor was my interface (no color), dual 5.25″ floppies (1 for the program, 1 for data) with no HDD, as that was just too expensive! I used a 132-column matrix text printer (just like the one shown) to print my program code…
That PC ran with a single-core 8086 16-bit CPU (called the “iAPX 86,” released to the marketplace several years earlier on June 8th, 1978) and 640k of RAM which I upgraded later to reach the max. capacity of 1024k with an extension card
The OS in use at that time was prior to any version of Windows, so I was just running under DOS 1.1 (shown in the snap) with a text-based command interface. The apps I used were Word Perfect for formal documents, Lotus 1-2-3 for managing the math in my business, and a simple DOS text editor for writing and editing code
I had earlier put a Tandy TRS-80 into my basement with a modem connection for a game-station around 1987… no HDD or floppies, data was stored on a cassette tape recorder. One of my kids & his friend (at the age of 8) would sit together, writing their equivalent of the Dungeons & Dragons game in Basic code… amazing!
With today’s well-connected iPad, iPhones and laptops, mobility is an absolute charm… as an example, I actually edited (a while back!) this page with my iPad whilst sitting in my armchair late on a Friday night, watching the Bill Maher 25-year Anniversary Special!
Looking back a little further, Computation became my lifetime career with an unexpected disability retirement from the British Army in 1978, where I had started out in 1970. The UK government provided me with 6-months of free retraining, bringing a restart to my life at Burroughs Corp… Computation-related activities continue today, in spite of my professional retirement a few years ago!