Personal question: How old is your computer?

[freebeard]

'Computersation drifted from desktop to laptops to mobile years ago.'

Computation has drifted downward (sizewise) to the wristwatch and eyeglasses.

I was thinking about the delivery mechanism. Dialup<DSL/Cable<cellular. There're pluses and minuses all along the spectrum.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by JSH

Today the majority of people in the world primarily access the internet and do computing on a mobile phone or tablet.

And with KaiOS being used in a lot of the cheapest phones available in some 3rd-world countries, because it's better suited to render a feature phone usually still with a physical keyboard capable to perform nearly all of the tasks we may expect a smartphone to perform. Sure some features of apps such as Whatsapp wouldn't be enabled, due to hardware requirements, but it wouldn't be so bad to implement some OS at least similar to KaiOS to a laptop or even a desktop, or even to a smartphone with a more capable hardware in order to enable all the features of Whatsapp for instance.

[Xist]

BackMarket has unlocked i6 variants for $69, so I am sure that you could jailbreak one and do something with it, but I don't know how many apps run on a 7-year-old iPhone.

Mom had a 6 and then a 7, but was having problems with that before I bought her i10 a while ago.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Making apps, softwares and operating systems heavier at each generation may also serve as an excuse to push people not only to buy a newer hardware more often, but also buy a more expensive one.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by cRiPpLe_rOoStEr

Making apps, softwares and operating systems heavier at each generation may also serve as an excuse to push people not only to buy a newer hardware more often, but also buy a more expensive one.

Among my big gripes; coders are wasteful these days.

An app to turn a switch on and off is hundreds of MB, when it should be measured in KB. I could write that program that would fit on a (gen II) floppy disk (1.44MB).

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

An app to turn a switch on and off is hundreds of MB, when it should be measured in KB. I could write that program that would fit on a (gen II) floppy disk (1.44MB).

Last time I used a floppy disk was 17 years ago. Nowadays, even some photos would be too big for a floppy disk...

[redpoint5]

I used floppys for a surprisingly long time as a way to boot machines using DOS disk 1, but it's still probably been 15 years since I've used one.

[freebeard]

Among my big gripes; coders are wasteful these days.

"640K should be enough for anybody." - Bill Gates 1981.

Fifteen years? 2008? Time flies like an arrow....

[JSH]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

I used floppys for a surprisingly long time as a way to boot machines using DOS disk 1, but it's still probably been 15 years since I've used one.

2016 was the last time I used a floppy. I had to upgrade a CNC punch from a floppy drive to USB. We ended up swapping out the entire control computer.

[freebeard]

I have boxes of floppys and a USB disk drive. Last I check none of them are readable.

https://search.brave.com/search?q=bit+rot&source=web

The only nonperishable digital media I'm aware of is to have things laser inscribed on a polished stainless steel tablet, readable with either optical or electron microscopes for data density.