Today I bought a Toshiba T3600CT, a laptop based on a Intel 80486 processor produced in 1994, sold at that time for 5000$ and had the new OS of that time, Windows 95. I found it in a swap meet and I have bought it for 10$. Makes me wonder how much we are paying for our IT junk around us, consumerism makes us want to buy the new shit on the shelf, but do we need it? Yesterday I was looking to a new laptop in our local mall, which would make my budget with 1400 $ thinner. Do I need the bigger RAM and HDD space and the new OS produced by a ultra rich geek wanker, which is named by a prime number, they don’t even dare to name it by the year the product appared, why should they? Just to see that after five years you work fine with your old laptop, with an old OS.

Once at home I started the laptop and surprise, it did not work.Yes, it is almost 15 years old, you might say, it is rubbish I thought for a second, but no, I left to charge the battery, after one hour the second surprise, it started and was work ready with the OS loaded (Windows 95) in less time the my actual laptop. Yes , my mobile phone has better RAM and CPU power and even the storage space is 1000 MB and the laptop has only 250 MB, but now with the working laptop I sit at my desk and ask myself if we realy need an upgrade, or should we just down grade our gadgets, slow down our speed to handle job and give more time to things that are pleasurable. No, the answer to my first question, I don’t need a new better, quicker laptop. I just have to tweak on my work ethics and the current laptop is going to be fine. Now with a working 486 laptop from 94 a second question started to bother me, what to do with it? Upgrade the RAM and HDD, install a new OS – Linux? No! I don’t have a good answer because I ask the wrong questions. It is going to be a perfect platform for some 8 bit games, I will start with Space Invaders.

As all things are connected on the internet made me stumble over this book: The Hitchhiker`s Guide to the Galaxy. How? Somewhere in the world there is right now (or was, depending on the relative time when you read this crap) a Space Invader exhibition in the same place as a Hitchhiker`s Guide to the Galaxy exhibition. I am at page 171 with the book. Funny coincidence. I will enjoy the book after I finish to write these words on my not so new laptop and I hope I am going to find a way to move the file from the T3600CT to my actual laptop, because I did not notice that back in 94 there was no USB or CD burning, just plain floppy. And where the fuck am I going to find one floppy at this hour. And even if I am lucky, there is no place to insert the ancient floppy on my laptop except my ass.

So long, and thanks to all the fish.

And now for something completely different.