Direct From TechProGuild

Interesting.  I had been wondering about OS/2 recently and whether
it could still be used productively.  I never used it myself,
although I did come across some OS/2 install floppies a few years back.

Out of curiosity, I am now downloading eComStation.  It should be a fun adventure.

Many years ago I installed OS/2 Warp on a PS/2. It was needed to connect to an IBM AS/400 threw a Token Ring for an application called "CallPAth" This machine ran for about 7 years without any downtime or problems. In fact I left the company and for 2 years no one even new what the PC was for.

 It seemed to be a very stable OS. Maybe I will get a copy of this eComStation and reminisce.  Thanks

A number of years ago I worked for the State of Arizona. We had an OS/2 V1 machine used as a print server!  That pc was rock solid. Never had a problem with it. OS/2 was a required OS from one of our vendor's we used to scan, view, store and print documents electronically.

Would love to see OS/2 run on a fast computer. With lots of  RAM. That could be exciting!!!!

I loved OS/2.  I used 2.11 and 3.0, back during the "Windows 3.1x"
days, and really loved it.  It could multi-task effortlessly on my
486-66 with 16 MB of RAM.  I have thought about trying eComStation
many times, but just can't get over the price they are asking.  I
suppose I should bite the bullet and get it though.

It's a darn shame IBM couldn't keep OS/2 as a viable platform. 
There are a lot of folks using Windows now that probably wouldn't be,
if only they had a modern up-to-date alternative for the PC
platform.  I remember feeling quite crushed by the way IBM handled
OS/2.  In the words of some long lost writer: "IBM managed to
snatch defeat in the OS wars, right from the jaws of victory!".

I have been running Linux, FreeBSD and Mac OS X as my main operating
systems for quite some time now.  I do still have one Windows 2000
Pro computer, but that's just for my work.   I realize Linux
is a far cry from OS/2, but it does what I need it to do, is very
stable and virus-free, and hey, the price is right too!

AFAIK, OS/2 is still used for automated teller machines. I once saw one
boot up (using Warp) in a hotel lobby after a power outage.

At one time OS/2 used to run every (or at least nearly every) ATM machine. While OS/2 still may be in use on some, the vast majority have converted to Windows (2000 or XP).

The new evolution of OS/2 Warp operating system, eComStation 2.0 beta 1 is available for eCS Software Subscribers.

The most significant updates on this beta version are:
- SNAP/ENT the special licensed version of SNAP by Serenity is in there, we boot Snap directly from CD-Rom
- Bootable JFS, this version is able to install on bootable JFS
volumes. Installing onto a bootable JFS volume will show a dramatic
performance increase!
- ACPI Driver if ACPI is detected for improved hardware support
- Updated Snooper drivers for improved hardware support during installation
- Updated eWorkplace to support ACPI

For more information visit:
http://www.ecomstation.com/ecomstation20.phtml

Regards

USB removable media runs fine on OS/2 Warp 4 and eComStation. Almost
every USB Flahs memory works under OS/2.

You can visit this page for more information on the drivers you need.
http://www.os2warp.be/index2.php?name=usbremovables

Please perform the same test on IE 7 Beta and include this in your results.

IEbeta7 doesn't run on Linux. And comparing Windows "stats" to Linux
"stats" is a little unfair considering that the Windows internals
(i.e., how memory usage is offered up to tools) is only knowable and
properly exploitable by MS insiders. In other words, Windows can
produce skewed results however it has been programmed to do and there
is no independent 3rd party to verify that what the stat tools say is
actually truthful or based on similar definitions of memory usage
(shared or otherwise) as defined on Linux.

The bottom line test is how does it feel to the user? IEbeta7 on Windows vs Firefox on Linux.

ps. Consider perhaps testing an FF build that has been optimized and
has various speedups turned on (not that this is how it comes out of
the box but it would still provide useful metrics for what is
achievable to any user that wants to go the extra mile tweaking). As
for IEbeta7, I don't work for Microsoft so I don't know what to
recommend except that I think it only runs on Windows XP so that (and
all the memory that the machine would require to support Windows/IE
shared internal libraries) would be a requirement.

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}>#5 - "GM will crash and burn before Apple does."? Absolutely correct.function (match)
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}>GM isn't any different than many PC manufacturers, building junk en masse from most of the line up with the occasional gem, most (95%) running with 'an outdated engine' using all the same underpinnings it had decades ago. Shiny knobs and whizzy names are added year after year and despite being touted as the largest automaker in the world, GM faces collapse because consumers are quietly walking away.?function (match)
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}>I chuckle whenever I see or hear of someone beaming about how excellent their Sunbird, or Sunfire.... wait for it...... El Camino was. What's funnier is glowing reviews based mostly on limited or no exposure to another brand or type. "I drives what I drives cuz my daddy drove it too." I suspect that many of the same people who have influence over desktops and server rooms probably drive GM products daily. Does anyone remember (or even know) that keys for a one GM product often fit similar cars... and worked. Yup, the industry leader couldn't be expected to have all the bases covered. Poor stupid masses. Seems to me I could be describing Microsoft instead of General Motors.function (match)
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}>iPods, not unlike Minis or Vespas or Prius' are hallmarks of function and oftentimes design too. They usually do what they do better than any other.? Apple will continue to be a much more relevant company than Microsoft, just like Honda and Toyota are compared to GM. IMO, since day one, any Mac has always been a better vehicle to drive, so to speak.? It will take a long time to get all the detroit, ooops... redmond pig iron that has been made (Win 95, 98 and so on) onto the scrap heap but that is because there is a whole infrastructure that supports this behemoth can't see past the next block.? function (match)
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}>MS for so many years, like GM, was asleep at the wheel, is currently overcorrecting and the writing is on the brick wall it is about to become a part of.?Market share matters most to the who has most to lose. GM is toast.? IMO, Microsoft should pay close attention to what is happening to GM.function (match)
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That's why I always recommend using security tools like SafeSystem from the company GemiScorp Software Solutions (www.gemiscorp.com/english/safesystem/info.html). This security tool perfectly complements my other security programs (antivirus, antispyware and firewall). This program doesn't need to know in advance which virus, worm, spyware or malicious code is trying to infect my computer, it simply doesn't allow any program to be installed or copied to my system while I'm surfing the Web or working with my computer. Later, if I need or want to install anything I just temporarily disable the program protection, perform the operation and then enable the protection again. It's that simple and I'm protected at all times no matter if my antivirus isn't updated or even disabled.

Here you can see a couple of screenshots from the program:

I'm not sure that I can agree with your confident conclusion posted in your final paragraph. Presumably when you last checked her machine in late fall (2004 or 2005?), the anti-virus software then installed should have been protecting against Bagle-W, and that protection should have continued provided that the anti-virus software was receiving regular updates and that users of the machine hadn't been disabling it (for their own spurious reasons). The more ready conclusion that I would have been likely to draw was that necessary anti-virus software operations hadn't been in place at some point, thus allowing the infection to occur.

You could more charitably assume that this machine had been infected with a new variant of Bagle-W in the period between when it was released onto the net and when anti-virus profiles containing its definition became available. Such a situation wouldn't, however, come under the heading of new infections caused by an old problem. The problem has effectively been re-invented, even if it does remind one of similar historical sightings.

Thank you. I knew there was something missing from my office Office. Just installed F1. Cute litle bugger. Yes, me too, don't actually use him but he's nice to have around.

Although my eyes welled-up with tears as I read your Wintel song of lamentation...I'm still trying to understand the point of your story.  This doesn't sound like a technical edge of one platform or computer over the other, rather, this is a simple story of human error I'd be rather embarrased to tell.  Now let's see, you can't afford CD burners in your workstations, but you can afford the 64-bit software.  Plus, you're running this advanced software on a PC not meeting the HCL requirements.  Well congratulations on creating such a problem for yourself.  It sounds as though the Mac came to the rescue after the tech guys created an emergency. 

I won't delve here too deeply into the Mac-PC platform war, but I'll add 2 points regarding Macs that everyone should know.  Apple releases a new OS every year.  "Great!", you say.  But hold on.  If you check the system requirements for virtually any piece of Mac-compatible peripheral equipment in any given year, you'll see that the OS from sometimes just 1 year prior is not supported.  For example, if today you purchase a scanner for your late-2004 or early-2005 Mac, you will probably need to upgrade your OS as well.  And if you lack the memory requirements of the new OS, you'll be required to purchase additional memory, too.  In another example, the latest version of Firefox will only run on OSX 10.4.  But you bought your Mac in 2004?  Go buy 10.4 today (even considering that 10.5 will soon be released!).  I call that insanity for an enterprise.  If you purchase the same peripheral equipment for the PC, most likely Win '98, 2000 Pro, and XP will be supported operating systems.  Second point: take it from the admin of a 50/50 Mac-PC enterprise (I know, it's not my fault), Mac hardware costs are astronomical.  You cannot simply purchase any internal parts for the Mac.  The Mac-compatible parts market is very tight and confined to a few vendors' products.  Power supplies typically cost me $150 each, PRAM batteries--$150/year (for 100 Macs), PAV boards--from $200 to $600.  And those are trade-in prices lowered for higher education.  I never condemn anyone's preference of platforms, but Macs present several increased costs for the enterprise.

*chuckle*

Well, it doesn't have much to do with affording the CD's in the
workstations. Our standard configuration when these stations were
bought were non-RWs. All of the production machines were bought that
way. The 64Bit machine is for the test network only. And it does have a
burner in it itself. It's just that the beta version of 64Bit Vista is
allergic to just about every CD-burning software I've put on it.

So yeah, the wounds are semi-self-inflicted, but it doesn't nearly rise
to the incompentence level that you're suggesting in your post. The
moral to the story was how ironic it was to be generating Windows
Server 2003 disks from a Mac when Vista couldn't do it.

As for the Mac-Windows Holy Wars, I won't get into that. I leave that up to other people...

Interesting tale... I like all the systems and machines, but I like them when they are on a production environment, in a lab that is not .. by definition... the place where everything works perfectly. I'm not sure burning cd's defines a benchmark...

MAC: It just works!

John,

Thank you for telling the world about the power of the Mac. I have often wondered why anyone would want to use any Apple product. Finally I have my answer. Mac's are good as a back-up CD burner! And to think that I was just using them as paper weights.

So what? Vista is still in Beta.

Correction: it wasn't "the fancy new Dell" that couldn't burn the
image, it was the crappy new Windows that couldn't.Stick in a Knoppix
CD, or if you have the time, a Window XP CD, and see how it works.

Try a more lightweight window manager like Fluxbox, FVWM, or Afterstep.

Good luck!

I would suggest ,if you haven't already tried this ,to recompile your kernel for the exact specs of your machine.
I have Slackware, which as default install was configured  for 486
cpu amongst other things. After a recompile to set cpu to P3 700 mhz
and ditching some things such as as laptop support , etc,etc, it flies
twice as fast now. Slackware was never known as a slow  distro to
begin with , but it's amazing what a close to perfect optimization can
do for you.It's fast in either Gnome or KDE.

You guys are WAY to pickie------Put SuSE 10.0 on an AMD 3200+, 1.5 Gb of RAM and see what happens-----KDE is a resource hog like WIndows XP, so give it some more to use----

John,
Yes I believe that the "responsiveness" of the KDE desktop is not a
quick as Windows XP but I still use it as my personal desktop
everyday.  I haven't used GNOME to any extent lately so I will
give it a try again. I just introduced a customer to SUSE Linux and
sold him a copy of SUSE Linux 10.0. He came in yesterday and said that
he loaded it with no problem and that he tried both KDE and GNOME and
that he liked GNOME best.  Great.. I don't care which desktop my
customers use and neither should anybody else.  That's one of the
benefits of Linux.. we can be different together.

Now in a corporate environment some standardization is needed so on
Novell's Linux Desktop they use GNOME as the desktop. Not so much a
surprise because both Nat Friedman and Miguel de Icaza are both
developers who prefer the GNOME environment. They have made a couple of
feelers to see if they could just do one desktop and there are so many
people on each camp that leaving one out would alienate too many people.

So we continue to have a choice of graphical interfaces and that is a
good thing, especially because many of us don't know why we like one or
the other.. we just do.  But responsiveness isn't the reason that
I chose Linux as my desktop regardless of whether I use KDE or
GNOME.  I chose it because of reliability, flexibility, security,
and cost in that order.  I have used other distributions.. Red
Hat, Simply Mepis, and Mandrake but SUSE seems to meet my needs beter
than any other so far.  Your mileage may vary.

Joe Cook

I disagree with your anecdotal evidence.  Unless you had just
about everything turned off in GNome it is a much heavier drain on
resources than KDE.   "I personally just encourage people to switch to KDE.
This 'users are idiots, and are confused by functionality' mentality of
Gnome is a disease. If you think your users are idiots, only idiots
will use it." -Linus Torvalds

I gave up on GNOME long ago, yes it's sleightly faster but if I want speed then both gnome & kde deserve to be scrapped. there are faster WM's around.
Then functionality.. If I want to print double sided no option on the printer menu (gnome) appearantly it is too difficult to use it as an end-user ==> the user won't need it, en thus no need to build it.
Have you seen kdeprinter? if my printer has some special option chances are i can use that option too (think double sided printing, multitray, and such).
Btw. KDE stands for Kiosk Desktop and is customizable from top to bottom, there are tools for disabling modifying alsmost every aspect of KDE. You can use it as a real KIOSK desktop.

Integration between components..., kde integrates a whole bunch.. Have you tried konqueror with some exotic protocols typing gg: in stead of http://google.com/ etc. will send your query to google..
use smb://server/share as a URL and you're looking at your samba/windows server etc. etc.

Not just from your konqueror:, f.e. run kate (tekst editor), open a new file (looking for existing ones) and type smb://server/ at your location: field... same view

All kio_slaves at your service. for newsgroups/manpages/bluetooth/perl doc/python doc's/windows helpfiles/newsgroups/plain files/ftp/http/subversion digital camera etc.etc.

gnome looks to me like the dark ages.

I agree that GNOME is better than KDE. I have used both and found that GNOME works faster but again I am using it just for web hosting, ftp, and mail server. I didn't install all the apps that came with it because I was not planning to use them. So that might have contributed to the speed difference. I also agree with the other comments that there are other WM that do a good job as well. Before I installed SUSE 10 I did a lot of reading of other users experiences instead of installing them and spending a lot of time to figure out which one would work for my specific needs. So I did my homework so to speak and I installed what I needed and I am a happy SUSE user with GNOME as my favorite WM.

Peace
Haas

Well as old as I am, computers are older. I do remember a time before PCs were everywhere, and where only special people had computers.

People in accounting had big ledgers and/or big filing cabinets. Things were typed on IBM Selectrics. Thats how my resume was first done.

Things took a long time. There were lots more steps in most processes with human intervention.

Life seems like it worked at a slower pace. You accepted a 15 minute wait at the bank.

James

I was in high school in 1976 boy I am old ;) we went to parties and meet people face to face. I could not even use the phone until I was 12 or 13, I read sci-fi and watched tv shows like lost in space and man from uncle. I started using computers in the 80's and you had to go through a local BBS to get to the internet. That was a great learning experence, at that time you had to build your own TCP/IP stack to get to the internet. And most of what you could get was others just starting out or government sites. And I got into more trouble in those days because I just wanted to look around and the DOD did not see it that way :)

We had a real secretary who would type our test reports and take
messages, since there was no voice mail.  It was amazing to see
her take notes in shorthand -- she could capture notes as quickly as
one could speak.

Calculators were big, electromechanical things that would take half a
desk and perform basic arithmetic.  For more advanced mathematical
work, a slide rule provided a convenience in a much smaller
package.  For things like trig functions, well, that's what the
CRC math tables were for. 

The requirement to take data, sketch curves, and plot data by hand
actually improved understanding.  Nothing was hidden inside a big
software package.

You fellows are all youngsters.  The first computer I programmed was a Univac 1, next was a Univac II and then spent many years with a DEC PDP-1 and so on.  Yup, I'm still programming, but the big difference now is that I have no management responsibilities and just pick and choose the projects I am really interested in.

One big difference I notice between BEFORE and now is back then we had much less paper stuff.  Just go into a medical facility and look at the piles of paper, most of it dealing with insurance forms, I'm sure.  I was the project director for the design and implementation of the first installed hospital wide medical ordering and patient record system . It was installed in the San Francisco Hospital in 1969.  It had 60 stations throughout the hospital with terminals, badge readers, light pens and printers.  By the way the computer had 16KB of memory with a 5 microsecond cycle time and a second 4KB computer for refreshing the displays.  Our goal was to improve patient care and to allow the medical staff to forcus more on the patient.  The next time you go into a hospital, hopefully just to visit, notice what the staff is primairly doing.  That's right, paper work,

Another big thing I notice is when I go shopping.  It used to be that you went up to the checkout counter, the clerk quickly wrote out a receipt, handed it to you and you were on your way.  Today, even when things are moderately busy, you stand in line with the few articles in hand that you want and wait while the clerk types the information and then waits for that to be digested and then wait somemore for the printer to fire up and print your receipt.  It's all very impersonnal, I think, because the clerk is a computer operator and does not have to pay attention to the customer.

I loved the work I did and am still doing, but in my opinion computers have not, in any way, lived up to their promise and that promise was to improve the quality of life.  Instead they have become the beast that demands service.  We are becomming the servant and they are becomming the master.  For that I blame the fact that we, the implementors of computer tools. focused on the wrong problem.  Instead of focusing on developing tools that made application implementation easier and more intuitive we focused on the technology of computers.  What was wrong with assembly language, Algol, Pascal.  OOPs is nothing more than a complication of reusing existing modules.  DLL's, COM's and their like are just an obscuration to accomplishment.  It all is layers upon layers of detail which have nothing to do with the main goal of implementation, but everyone in the field stumbles all over themselves just keeping up with it.

By the way, to the author of this original blog, if you enjoyed the book you referred to you might try finding a series of books called, "The Testement of Man".  I'm sorry I do not remember the author's name.  I believe they were published in the late 50's or early 60's.  I found them fasinating reading.

Mini-bit

Well,  there is one tool that has not been mentioned. Am I the only one who had to use a Slide Rule? Yup, that wooden (not plastic) ruler that could compute mathematical results. Business relied on mechanical adding machines, and accountants worked with columnar paper pads. It is enjoyable to look backward, and also encouraging to see that there still are some people working who had to program in assemble language and actually know what Algol was.

I grew up during the 60's. We did have a TV when I was young, but it was black and white. We only had 4 channels to watch, of which one was always snowy. City kids walked to school. School buses were for rural kids only. We played outside, running and bike riding from dawn to late evening most days, during spring and summer vacations. I took "Data Processing" in high school in the late 60's early 70's. Computers took up whole rooms and were less than fraction of the power and capability a mediocre laptop today. Data was fed and retreived via " Keypunch cards". Typewriters, shorthand, adding machines ruled the office. Frankly, I don't think things having to do with typewriters or adding machines are much faster today with computers than they were then. Typing is typing, whether you do it on a good electric typewriter or adding machine or computer. Moreover, I'd say today, with clogged networks and computer glitches, it sometimes takes longer than it did back then.  

I started in full time work in IT in 1970.  There was a lot less paperwork. When you had to write stuff by hand, or dictate it, and then get a full-time typist to type it up, you kept to the essentials. A correction or alteration normally meant re-typing the whole page. When I re-joined my first employer (a large bank) in the late 1990's, they had adopted PRINCE management methodology, and IT developers were spending most of their time cutting and pasting stuff between word-processor documents; the amount of time spent on actual design and programming was less than half.

Before word-processors, many people (mostly women) were employed as full-time typists, trained to touch-type at high speed. Non-academic kids destined for white-collar jobs were even taught the basics in high school. This occupation has now pretty much disapppered, and most people now are learning to type the hard way at half the speed.

People were content with far simpler presentation methods, i.e. character-based systems, and relevant staff were trained in their operation.

Bear in mind that office automation goes back a long way, to the invention of the Hollerith card in the 1890's. I recall a quote from a college textbook in the 1960's that at that time, without [electromechanical] automation, 50% of the women in the USA would have been employed in book-keeping in American banks.

I actually used a fax machine in my first job in 1970; it was electro-mechanical and slow, and very big.

The other main difference is that in the old days customer service was dealt with by local sales people, depending on personal knowledge of the customer or paper records. Today, especially with call centre systems, customer service depends on whatever computer records one anonymous operator has recorded for the next anonymous operator. Without the computer, the whole system collapses. (Although even ancient empires managed to set up large bureaucracies when required.)

As an engineer approaching retirement in about 5 years, I do remember life before computers.  In college in the late 1960's we still used slide rules and did Fortran programs on punch cards and waited for batch processing on main frames.  Scientific calculators appeared in the mid-1970's and replaced the slide rule.  Typewriters and forms were used for documents in most of the 1960's and 70's.  Dedicated word processing machines began to appear in the late 1970's for use by admin assistants. Engineering drawings were done on paper and vellum on big drawing boards before CAD programs became available in the late 1980's.

I remember seeing the first Apple II's and Commodore PET PCs in the late 1970's.  My first PC was an Apple IIc in the early 1980's.

DOS PCs began to appear in offices in the early and mid-1980's. I remember using Zenith Z-100s and Z-248s which were 8086 and 286 based PCs running DOS and then Windows 3.1.  Although I had a 386 PC for awhile, I remain a Mac enthusiast and have had a series of Macs since.  OSX Tiger is great and I deal with Windows XP at work.

A lot of changes in the past 40 years. PCs and networks have done much to improve productivity and reduce new product development time, especially using modeling and simulation to reduce prototype iterations.

In 1960 I had access to STRETCH super computer. It was all of 92 K (not Meg) RAM of which 86k were available to the user.
Input: write out each Fortran statement onto a form, then girls punched cards (80 column) then it failed because you have three brackets one side and four the other.
But by 1964 I had access to an IBM with 8k RAM. This took cards printed directly from some equipment we had. It took a whole day to process 4,000 records.
Then came the IBM 360. Cards, cards-to-tape and a whole day to process 12,000 records using a COBOL program.
As for Word Processors, we had typing pools!
It was only in 1991 that everybody got their own PC, a microchannel IBM PS/2 386.
I still have one that works, with DOS, First Choice Office Suit, Paradox for Dos etc.

Not directly a comment on this article, but definitely related to it.  I often wonder what I and my fellow IT collegues would be doing for our livlihood if we had lived before computers, or if there were still no computers today.  I was always a techie (one of those kids that took everything electronic or mechancial apart, and usually, but not always, could get them back together again). I got involved with computers at about age 6.  My Dad worked for HP in Colorado and employees could "check out" computers to take home so he'd bring one home quite a few weekends.  He got into programming and started teaching me BASIC programming when I was 8.  My first computer of my own was a Commodore 64 when I was a Freshman in high-school.  So almost from day 1 (at least when you start truly thinking about your future) I knew I wanted to do something with computers.  I can't even imagine my life without computers, so I question quite often what my full time job would be if there were no computers.  I can only guess some type of engineer, possibly electrical (but even then what if I'd lived before electricity), maybe mechanical.

To give you an example of what life was like before computers, I'll
relate a story from my days with the Colorado highway department as a
civil engineer before becoming a software engineer.

In Colorado, as you can imagine, highway projects were done during the
Summer months which left winter for surveying and paperwork. After one
large Summer project, there was an overrun between 'cuts' and 'fills'
where we cut more dirt out than we had places to put it. This causes
extra expense to find a place to put the extra dirt, so we needed to
figure out why this happened. That meant we spent the entire Winter
months going through the paper plans of the project and calculating,
for each 100 foot section, exactly how much dirt was supposed to be
either taken out or added to it and then adding and subtracting the
results until we figured out where the overrun came from.

That waste of time could have been avoided by using a computer to do
the design which would have automatically adjusted the cuts and fills
until they matched, and we would not have spent that time sitting at a
desk calculating with one of the afore-mentioned large
electro-mechanical calulators. There was, however, one big advantage to us of
spending that time at the desk. We didn't spend the time, in the snow,
surveying, which I spent way too much time doing!

Mi first meeting with a digital device was a Texas Instruments handheld calculator that performed the four basic operations and % (circa 1974). Then I used an IBM 370 with punched cards at the University. And I remember on my father?s desk a heavy mechanical calcultaror he used for his accounting work.

My dad started with assembly code as an engineer who got tired of waiting for the DP department to get to his changes.  I still remember imagining the computer falling over whenever it "crashed" and lost all his work.  I took Intro to DP in my first semester in college, just so I could talk his language.  Turns out I was better than most of the guys in class, so I went from an Ornamental Horticulture (say that 3 times fast, I dare you) major to Math with an emphasis in DP.  The accounting classes I took had the students doing the whole process of financial reporting by hand; no computers involved.  Now QuickBooks does it all, so General Ledger transactions can be really scary to people who've never done a "T-account".

I agree that learning a process without computing power provides a deeper understanding, so you really know what you're doing when you do use the computer.

My grandfather-in-law was an accountant for the railroads.  We still have some of his accounting journals, full of beautiful, neat, and precise numbers. You had to have readable handwriting back then!

When all is said and done, I'd rather live at this time then back when women were "the girls" in the typing pool and doing the grunt work for accounting. My mom had only the work choices of Teacher, Nurse and Secretary, but my daughter will be anything she sets her mind to, even a techie like her mom.

Mindy

I didn't get to play with any pre-"trash-180" computers, but I've got a few punch cards my sister had left over from her college computing class. (Ironically, in the early 90's, she worked at a sewing factory that tracked their piece baskets with punchcards--the system worked well enough they never bothered to upgrade!) And some of my middle-school teachers liked to talk about when THEY were in school and the "in" job everyone was supposed to be going to school for was Punch Card Operator.

And y'know, there were (maybe even ARE) people who could get an answer from an abacus as fast as from an electronic calculator.

I ran a Burroughs 4/5 row posting machine in the 60's, seemed almost as
big as a piano. Checking was done by having two posters and comparing
tallies.
Those huge countertop adding machines could be used for "slide"
multiplication. You simply added your second figure the number of times
of the digit and shifted left one place for every column ( 10 times as
much). ; easier to show than describe.So, if your right hand figure was
6 you added 6 times, etc. Since the keyboard locked in place, you only
"reprogrammed" for each column by moving everything left one place.
I never did use a slipstick. Log and antilog  tables for trig were around but not common for everyday use.
I remember one oldtimer  complaining that new 
construction  tables - building trades stuff - missed viable
materials combinations because it was too cumbersome to precalculate
all possibilities.

My first encouner with computers was in college.  It was the early
70's and the public concept of a computer was a huge machine occupying
several floors of a building "somewhere."  Most of us had never
seen a computer of any sort, and only knew of these arcane devices
through rumor or the occasional media story.
I was one of the privileged few who would be taking a radical
experimental class.  We would be taught how to input problems to a
computer and use the resulting output as an engineering tool.  Of
course, we would have to observe the proper customs.
First, we had to formulate our problems in the proper manner.  For
this we needed to master the arcane language FORTRAN.  We had
heard of another computer language known as COBOL, but this was
reserved for the business majors.
Once formulated, our inputs needed to be rendered in the proper manner,
punched cards known coloquially as "IBM Cards."  We learned of the
EBCIDIC code that would render our FORTRAN statements in a manner
acceptable to the machine.  Patiently we typed each card,
faithfully rendering our program onto the little cards.  Of
course, each card was numbered, and we had to keep the cards in
numerical order lest the machine would frown upon our feeble attempts
and reject our program.
With our deck of cards properly collated we were permitted to approach
the acolytes serving the great machine, a class of priests known as
"operators."  Like many minor functionaries, operators held an
incredibly inflated opinion of themselves and delighted in exercising
every miniscule tidbit of power they posessed.  "Sure, kid, I'll
try and run it today.  Check back in an hour or two."  The
prescribed response was to obsequiously thank the operator, lest your
run be shifted to a lower priority queue and you had little hope of
seeing any output for at least a week.
The goal of this exercise was to get a clean run.  This rarely occured on the first pass.
After waiting the requisite hour or two, one went to the output shelf
and looked for one's output, a stack of wide printout sheets with a
deck of cards attached.  If successful, your printout showed the
results of your program.  If unsuccessful (most likely) the
printout represented a dump of your cards with a few very obscure
comments as to the reason your job crashed.  At this point you had
to analyze each and every line to determine if you had a typo (very
likely,) if your cards had somehow gotten out of order (I still believe
a few sadistic operators would deliberately cut the deck) or if there
was some flaw in your logic.  Debugging was a very painful
experience in those dark days.
Today, computers have become ubiquitous.  It is the age of a PC in
every home and a microprocessor in everything else.  We no longer
program, we use software programs.  In one generation, computers
have emerged from the temple and are part of our everyday lives. 
And I like to think that a few sadistic computer operators have been
humbled.

Bill:

Your comment about computer operators rang true.  I used to work
in the computer lab at the University of South Florida. Punch Cards had
long since passed away, but we still had to manage the mainframe
terminals, networked PCs and the mainframe printer and printouts. There
I came across the funniest set of stories about operators which could
only be describe on this site by its acronym: BOFH.  It's even appropriate for modern network administrators and support professionals.

Strangely enough, I was teaching a class of new hires last week and in progress mentioned how things have progressed. "When I was in school" we even used log books and slide rules. This was before they even allowed handheld calculators! This was in South Africa in 1980, and that was not even that far back!

Brad

The "good old days" used typing pools instead of work processors, accountants with two-column ledgers instead of spreadsheets, and filing cabinets instead of databases.  Lots and lots of filing cabinets.  We wrote letters instead of email, and could leave a message with an assistant instead of voice mail.  The biggest difference, though, was that we had to know a lot more off the top of their heads than we do today.  We didn't have to take a week or two to compile the data, because we had to work with the information all the time.  On a constant, day-to-day basis we read and summarized articles, wrote briefs and memos, and when it came time to answer a question from management, we had to rely on what we knew right then.  That's part of the good old days that I really miss.

Insert comment text here

Forms, folders, tabulated paper, graph paper, card indexes, slide rules - can remember using all these.

Paul Hayes

Back in the late 60's, I remember working in an office for a construction company that had union laborers on their payroll.  We thought the one-write check pegboard system was the best thing to come along.  With it, you hand-wrote the payroll checks, pay breakdown, and itemized deductions, all of which copied over to an master ledger sheet in one step.  Of course, the math had to be done with the old electronic calculator.

The next best invention was the typewriter correction tape that was used to erase typing errors.  Of course, later on, IBM Selectrics came out, followed by word processors.   

I think office workers had to have more mathematical skills and be super typists back then. 

I remember learning to write assembler programs on IBM VS1 on an Amdahl
540 with 1 meg of real RAM running IBM-type 3330 disk drives.  Our
network with VTAM (of course) and over 1000 people were supported on
the system.  ASCII was a dream; EBCDIC ruled.

In college, we were still running card-decks on a Burroughs.  When
the sys manager finally let us see the job submission queue on a video
monitor, we called it "cool".

I crashed a PDP11-70 filling the process table with my first shell script...too many forks at the table?
Thanks for the memories,
Ed

We used pens, paper, adding machines, mechanical calculators and punch card tabulators.

I ran an electrical contractor shop in the very early 1970's until
1999. When I started the business was a totally manual pen and
paper operation. I took the business to a automated, bar code
driven operation during my tenure. So what did I decide for a
career after retiring from that business? I'm the Technical
Director for a small medical software developer.

I also had a laugh the other day.  My younger children aged 7 and
8, were tasked at  school to find out how life differed in their
parent's childhood due to technology.  They almost freaked when I
pulled out a vinyl album and a sliderule.

I grew up on ten-key calculators for number crunching with many books for posting data for review.

Documents were typed on IBM Selectric typewriters, printed on a small press, bound and distributed

Forms were created by LetraSet characters and laid out on blue line graph paper for reproduction

Computers have made life somewhat simpler, though the greatest benefit is due to process improvements and reduced time invested to accomplish similar tasks

mike vorel

Okay, I admit it.  When I was in high school I took a typing class
- on manual typewriters.  Only the secretaries and advanced
placement students were allowed to touch the IBM Selectrix.  My
family owned a small business, too.  I used to help with year end
"getting ready for the auditors".  And that involved large ledger
books, pages of hand-written entries and hours on a then state of the
art adding machine.  I wasn't allowed to touch the big machine
that did multiplication and division.  Photo-copiers were a big
deal.  I remember mimeograph machines in school and how the
handouts smelled when you got them in class.  And a student
standing by the machine and cranking the handle for hours to get copies
created for all the classes.  Carbon paper.  Whiteout. 
Erasable carbon paper was cool when it came out, correcting mistakes
was so much easier.  Typing pools.  Some of the old movies
show women (almost always) sitting in a large room and pounding out
reams of paper.  Did you know there are still some people who
prefer writing out letters long hand and then having a typing person
enter them into the computer?  How wasteful.  First you write
it out, then they type it, then you correct it (since they couldn't
read your handwriting), then they retype it, you correct it, and so on
until you either get it right or give up.  Shorthand.  My mom
learned shorthand in high school.  I never attempted to learn
because I was sure I was never going to do that kind of work - and I
was right.  The good old days - how I DON'T miss them.