I still remember the XP error sound. It was the stuff of nightmares. And in those days, we weren’t taught how to use a Modem because my mum didn’t like us using the internet and instead brought an encyclopedia for school stuff, so I would have to fix all the shit I fucked up without google before anyone found out. Fun times. Really improved my troubleshooting skills, though.
During some practical school training (basically two weeks where pupils are send to work in companies full-time without pay) at an electronics shop, someone brought in a Windows XP machine that caused problems. Heard that sound so often…
Turned out they still ran it without any Service Packs. Windows Update also refused to work… and it was registered to those fine people called “Skidrow” (the cracking group). 😅
At that time those registration cracks already supported Windows Update, they should’ve updated that one!
I bet there are a lot of machines like that. I knew this one person, a biology teacher whose lab computer still had 7, but it ran perfectly well. She refused to upgrade it to 8/10 because there really was nothing wrong with it. Many people I know with very old machines still have their OS because it just … works. Might differ in the States though, tech becomes mainstream here at least five years after it is released.
So your mom spent around $4500 in today’s dollars for a standard computer set up of the time, then spent thousands more on an encyclopedia set because she wanted the computer crippled so you couldn’t look at porn.
My god we humans are repressed.
An Encarta CD would have been a lot cheaper, just saying.
No, lol. She got a ~400 page ‘children’s encyclopedia’ because she liked it and I liked reading. Fairly cheap, and useful if you want to look up something like ‘types of volcanoes’. Besides, it was a little home laptop, which my dad used before. I doubt if she had even known how much porn existed on the internet, since we used it rarely and it was terribly expensive (dunno about the US, since I am not an American) at that time. I’m pretty sure the reason she didn’t want me using the internet was because kids are dumb and break stuff. Laptop was already sluggish as hell.
Also, it was far easier to just pick up a book you’ve read many times and find the section you’re looking for than turn on the laptop, wait for the damn thing to boot, call an adult to connect it to some outdated Modem that’s slow as hell, ask that person to search something because you have no idea how that stuff works and then get some long ass site, summarise it and finish your homework. Just saying. Has got nothing to do with repression, since we also had a book full of paintings and quite a few were nude. If anything, my mum was kind of more open than most since she had a masters in biotech and taught high school science for many years.
Right on, thanks for the story! This is later than I thought because when I think dialup internet, it was before laptops were really a thing. They existed but I don’t think I ever saw one in person, just in catalogues.
I still remember the XP error sound. It was the stuff of nightmares. And in those days, we weren’t taught how to use a Modem because my mum didn’t like us using the internet and instead brought an encyclopedia for school stuff, so I would have to fix all the shit I fucked up without google before anyone found out. Fun times. Really improved my troubleshooting skills, though.
During some practical school training (basically two weeks where pupils are send to work in companies full-time without pay) at an electronics shop, someone brought in a Windows XP machine that caused problems. Heard that sound so often…
Turned out they still ran it without any Service Packs. Windows Update also refused to work… and it was registered to those fine people called “Skidrow” (the cracking group). 😅
At that time those registration cracks already supported Windows Update, they should’ve updated that one!
I bet there are a lot of machines like that. I knew this one person, a biology teacher whose lab computer still had 7, but it ran perfectly well. She refused to upgrade it to 8/10 because there really was nothing wrong with it. Many people I know with very old machines still have their OS because it just … works. Might differ in the States though, tech becomes mainstream here at least five years after it is released.
So your mom spent around $4500 in today’s dollars for a standard computer set up of the time, then spent thousands more on an encyclopedia set because she wanted the computer crippled so you couldn’t look at porn.
My god we humans are repressed.
An Encarta CD would have been a lot cheaper, just saying.
No, lol. She got a ~400 page ‘children’s encyclopedia’ because she liked it and I liked reading. Fairly cheap, and useful if you want to look up something like ‘types of volcanoes’. Besides, it was a little home laptop, which my dad used before. I doubt if she had even known how much porn existed on the internet, since we used it rarely and it was terribly expensive (dunno about the US, since I am not an American) at that time. I’m pretty sure the reason she didn’t want me using the internet was because kids are dumb and break stuff. Laptop was already sluggish as hell.
Also, it was far easier to just pick up a book you’ve read many times and find the section you’re looking for than turn on the laptop, wait for the damn thing to boot, call an adult to connect it to some outdated Modem that’s slow as hell, ask that person to search something because you have no idea how that stuff works and then get some long ass site, summarise it and finish your homework. Just saying. Has got nothing to do with repression, since we also had a book full of paintings and quite a few were nude. If anything, my mum was kind of more open than most since she had a masters in biotech and taught high school science for many years.
Right on, thanks for the story! This is later than I thought because when I think dialup internet, it was before laptops were really a thing. They existed but I don’t think I ever saw one in person, just in catalogues.