Hello and welcome to TechnoRob's Blogsite!
This site will track technology trends in all things "gadget" and serve as a place for my own personal reviews on some of them.
I have been a technologist for nearly 30 years beginning with my experiences on the DEC PDP-8e (e for extended memory). This was an 12-bit mini-computer that had 8k of magnetic core memory for program store. It was the only system fast enough for the 48kbit network tests on the banking systems I was working on at the time. I think it weighed around 100lbs. That same year I purchased my first PC - an Apple II with 16K of memory and a cassette data interface for about $2k. I later upgraded it to the full 48k of ram and dual 140Kb floppy drives for an additional $1K.
I think I added a 10Mb hard drive a year or two later as well. Wow. That was a long time ago. I can also remember working on the mainframe systems to write 8080 assembler code saving source and compiled code on a 14" 10Mb removable platter from a hard drive that was slightly smaller than a dishwasher containing 10Mb fixed and 10Mb removable... These were upgraded recently from the 5Mb-over-5Mb system the year earlier. CDC made the drives If I recall correctly.
I have owned pretty much all of the gadgets along the way, too.. I had the first "portable" cell phones that you could lug around in a briefcase at about 10lbs and only worked in certain locations, so they weren't much better than pay phones other than you didn't have to get wet getting out of your car. I bought the first PDA - The Apple Newton - and a number of renditions since. I never found one that I would happily use. My life today is just about capturing little snippets of technical data and critical quotes from my customer. The PDA just doesn't cut it for me.... So I still just use a small notebook to write in pencil and transcribe summaries into the PC for Email to my peers pretty much without change in 30 years.
So you might label me a curmudgeon. Perhaps I am, but first and formost I consider myself excruciatingly practical. I won't use something just because it is cool. I has to improve my life in some way or I toss it on the heap with the rest of the useless techno-garbage I have collected over the years.
So - I hope to entertain and delight you with my spin on technology.
