Today's Wall Street Journal Article

From: Richard A. Cini, Jr. <rcini_at_msn.com>
Date: Wed Jul 2 18:47:44 1997

All:

        For your enjoyment...

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Why We Can't Part With Those Vintage PCs

By G. PASCAL ZACHARY
Staff Reporter of TIIE WALL STREET JOURNAI.
When it comes to her husband's habit of clut-tering their Redmond, Wash., home
with broken and outmoded computer gear, Pam Vavra knows where to draw the
line.
The kitchen.
Last month, Brad, her husband, stuffed a Mason jar with dozens of old memory
chips and put it on a shelf next to similar jars that held fruit. Brad thought
"it looked cool," he says, but she disagreed. "The kitchen is mine," she told
him. "Your chips don't go with the decor."
It would be an exaggeration to say that in kitchens all over America, people
are filling their shelves with old computer gear. But as computers become
nearly as common as toasters, the space devoted to computer junk expands, too.
To be sure, some people have always had a hard time throwing things away.
Didn't everyone's grandmother save string? Like the savers of old, today's
digital packrats can't help themselves. "The reason you can't throw it away
like an old shoe box is pre-cisely because you've established a prior
relationship with it," says Brigitte Jordan, an anthropologist at Xerox Corp.
who studies the relationship between people and things.
As computers become more sophisticated, Ms. Jordan says, human interactions
with them become more in-tense, intimate and memorable, making it harder for
owners to part with their gear. For instance, Jim Kelnhofer, a programmer at
Microsoft Corp., keeps his first computer in plain view in his bedroom. "I
turn it on once or twice a year," he says.
Hanging onto old computer stuff isn't just sentimen-tal, though. Some people
paid so much for their outmoded machines that they can't bear to part with
them for a song. And with computers changing so rapidly-obsoles-cence
typically occurs in three years-many owners com-bat the disorientation of
rapid change by keeping their old stuff nearby.
"My theory is that these folks are so giddy with the pace of change that they
keep this junk around as a trail of intellectual breadcrumbs, leading them
back to their computing origins," says Paul Saffo, director of the Institute
for the Future in Menlo Park, Calif.
That's certainly true of Mr. Vavra, a software programmer who keeps the first
computer he ever owned (a Franklin Ace) in his garage. A year ago, he donated
to Microsoft's museum his Apple Lisa, a precursor to the Macintosh, but he
can't part with an original Apple II, a computer on which he wrote some of his
first programs in the 1970s.
It is even more common for people to surround themselves with old gear at
work. Alan Cooper, a computer consultant in Palo Alto, Calif., keeps a line of
old chips on his desktop computer monitor and a few hundred computer
punchcards -- not used since the 1970s -- in his desk drawer. "That's a
lifetime supply now," says Mr. Cooper, who uses them as bookmarks.
Mr. Cooper occasionally tosses out gear, but not easily. He is still sorry
about his decision five years ago to give away an original Macintosh to a
public school. Whenever he considers tossing out, say, the Hewlett-Packard
calculator he bought in college 25 years ago, he thinks about how much he
misses the Mac. "I don't want to make that mistake again," he says.
        While vintage computers provide psychological ballast against the shock of
the new, there are sound economic reasons for retaining obsolete machines:
Many are im-possible to sell or give away. In California alone, an esti-mated
two million PCs are abandoned each year. Many sit in closets or warehouses or
under desks. Others are sold at yard sales, left on the street, or
cannibalized by recyclers for valuable metals.
        Most charities, for instance, have firm standards on which computers they
will accept as donations. “We don’t want your junk,” says Helga Luce, a
spokeswoman for Goodwill Industries.
        Even perfectly good computers often can't be given away. The Detwiler
Foundation, which donates to schools computers rescued from oblivion, doesn't
take machines that are powered by anything less than Intel's nine-year-old 386
chip. "We're not doing a school a favor by giving them a 286," says Diane
Detwiler, the foundation's executive director, referring to Intel's
15-year-old microprocessor.
        Some charities have even tougher standards. Gifts in Kind, an Alexandria,
Va., nonprofit that distributes donated computers, will accept only those
machines whose parts, manuals and maintenance are readily available. The
charity won't accept, for instance, the Macintosh Classic, a venerable
computer that sold in the millions.
        Thwarted in their efforts to give away their most ancient machines, some
computer owners try to make the best of a bad situation. Cliff Stoll, a
computer-security expert in Oakland, Calif., came up with a novel answer to
the question, "What do you do with a used computer?" Mr. Stoll, who is a
commentator on the cable channel MSNBC and an author, has turned a one-piece
Macintosh Plus into an aquarium, hollowing out the electronics and filling the
case with water and fish.
        As if the aquarium weren't enough, Mr. Stoll turned an old IBM PC into a
litter box for his cat. While the cat became enamored of the box, "I realized
that really isn't a good second life for a computer," he says.
        For some fanatics, giving their computers decent storage space is more
fitting. "My reasoning is really very simple," says Marc Weiser, a computer
scientist at Xerox's Palo Alto, Calif., research lab. "Old computers are
worthless to everybody else, so even if they have a dime of value to you its a
dime you wouldn't have otherwise."
        Mr. Weiser keeps three old computers in his garage, including one he built in
1975. "Maybe I'll show it to my kids someday. You know, like an heirloom."
        Other digital packrats harbor similar delusions. Kimball Brown, a market
researcher in San Jose, Calif., thinks his motley collection of modems,
compact-disk drives, memory chips and entire computers could be worth
something someday. Even if he's wrong, he insists, he can't lose. "I have a
dream that someday I'll open a computer museum," he says.
        But there already are computer museums, and they are pretty choosy, too.
Curators want collectible computers to be in pristine condition and perhaps
bear some unique mark, such as a designer's signature.
        "What turns out to be valuable, you can't really know," says Gwen Bell,
co-founder of the Computer Museum in Boston. But "if it's not shiny and
polished and isn't part of a big story, it probably isn't worth keeping."
Received on Wed Jul 02 1997 - 18:47:44 BST