10 year rule

From: Gordon JC Pearce <gordon_at_gjcp.net>
Date: Wed Nov 17 15:49:56 2004

Doc Shipley wrote:
> Computer Collector E-Mail Newsletter wrote:
>
>> The terms are too similar, people will just get more confused.
>>
>> All I intended to do when I started this discussion topic was to point
>> out the
>> obsurdity of considering things like the Web and Pentiums as "vintage"
>> (or any
>> other synonym). But then others observed back that I was being
>> short-sighted
>> -- if you ignore that actual age, "vintage" just means "anything
>> considered
>> obsolete by the mainstream," and that's a good enough answer for me.
>> But I do
>> think that 15 years, not 10, is a better divider between what's just
>> "old" and
>> what's truly vintage.
>
>
> I think you're all looking at this completely backwards.
>
> The rate of electronic evolution (OK, change) has *accelerated* over
> time, meaning that computers are obsoleted much more quickly than their
> older counterparts. Therefore the age limit for this list should be
> *lowered* to about 8 years now.

I would not quite describe my IBM Workpad Z50 as a classic, but it
certainly is unusual. OK, it is basically just a big WinCE PDA (or is
it a very small MIPS laptop?), but they are interesting, and not exactly
a common commodity.

I wonder if my old Compaq P60 would be classified as a classic yet?
Again, not that old, and "beige box", but very cool and unusual in that
it had built-in SCSI, and a keyboard with a mike and speaker built in.
Lots of other little wierd things like that too...

Gordon.
Received on Wed Nov 17 2004 - 15:49:56 GMT