I am a thrift store browser. I collect – everything – right now I am into retro computers! I’ve been the depression glass etc… route -but- and there always seems to be a butt – doesn’t there – when you have one or two or three of everything – you need to move on!
Today I set my mother up with a windoze ’95 computer so she could take advantage of the three free months of @aol.com we signed her up for. My mother is 77-you’ve got to keep those neurons working in the brain! We have a cable internet connection, but – here I am at butt again – CompUSA had a deal we couldn’t pass up – three free games (cheap ones we’ll never use – but. . . ), three free months of AOL and 50, yeah 50 CD-R’s Anyway – back to my mother’s other computer – I should say Thee Computer-Macintosh – Quatra 840AV – nice computer -butt- she couldn’t get dial up – so we gave it to my 10 year old nephew. An older nephew was there at the time and laughed about the old Mac and says – hey I wouldn’t even steal a Mac – and me – I have four right fine Mac’s all networked together – I handed him a piece of paper and says – make me out a list of what you wouldn’t steal and I will go in on one of my Mac and type up a list and pass it out to family and friends – titled: Things to Keep in Mind for Future Purchases!
Let’s talk thrift stores or hand me down computers: We as a family are voyeurs of the files people leave on computers they no longer need. My favorite is an apple laptop from a person at Novell with secret company documents from 1995! Another one was from the BYU Computer Science Department. The best one was a computer that was owned by a group of college graduate students. Some great school projects on that computer! We gave it my ten-year-old son and the two older kids were irate when they discovered that he had deleted all the files before they got a chance to look them over. My 15 year old daughter and I have a thrift store circuit we travel on Saturday mornings. We find computer systems and hook them up. The good ones we buy and usually give to family or friends who need a computer, but even the so-so systems we leave hooked up are usually bought by someone else before we even leave the store.
The only thing, in my humble opinion, Bill Gates has over Macintosh is Windows Solitaire. Especially when you play and win on an old computer running 3.1. I love to watch the cards bounce across the screen. In fact that’s the reason I play! I don’t play it on the newer faster machines because the cards move too fast. Technology seems to move forward a couple of steps and then comes back and kicks you in the teeth! Let me back up and explain that statement: I had two windows PC’s that I put Ethernet cards in to route up to our cable connection to download some upgrades before we found good homes for them. Solitaire stopped working. Who wants a computer that doesn’t play solitaire? A window pops up accusing me of performing an illegal operation and tells me it’s going to shut me down! That’s pure slander and I should sue Microsoft for that! None of my Mac’s has ever insulted me like that! I had downloaded a Pop-Up Stopper to stop the advertising while online and quess what – it only stopped solitaire from popping up!
Let me know if you have a computer with interesting files to donate and I’ll send you a copy of “Things to Keep in Mind for Future Purchases”!
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