44 lbs
20 years ago, I was gearing up to head to college.¹ One of the things I remember distinctly from that time: picking out a computer that would be my machine at school. This was a big deal. It was to be the first computer I actually owned. That is, the first one that was solely mine. Not my dad’s machine. Not the family machine. Mine.
Dude was not getting a Dell.² But I didn’t go with Apple either! My life was quite different then. I was a Microsoft kid through and through. Have I mentioned I went to the midnight launch of Windows 95? A dozen times, going back years, you say? Anyway, I got a Gateway.
I had that machine throughout my college experience. And one gnarly hard drive failure aside, it served me well. As crazy as it is to think about now, this was the era before smartphones. Even before laptops were ubiquitous. My machine was a full-on power tower. I lived on that machine.
The thing I most remember about the machine? Unsurprisingly, the thing that glowed both day and night. The screen.
It was massive. And I do mean massive — even by today’s standards (of course, today’s standards are usually laptops), it was big. 19-inches big. In the day, the norm was more like 14, 15, or 17-inches. But I went with the beast. Did I mention it was a CRT monitor? It was deeper than it was tall. It weighed 44 pounds.
Yes, 44. Forty. Four.
A not insignificant part of my life during certain times of years was figuring out how to transport this thing to and from campus. To get it up stairs. To make sure I had a desk that was strong enough to support it. To make sure there was enough room between said desk and the wall to allow it to hulk.
I started thinking about this machine in an email conversation the other day with my friend Jay. I remembered my monitor being huge, but could it have really been nearly 50 pounds?! I had to look it up. It could indeed — 44.1 pounds, actually. And as I sit here writing this on an iPad, I’m in awe.
This machine is 1 pound. Well, okay, technically 1.04 pounds. One. Point. Zero Four. I can hold it in one hand with ease. The screen is a mere 11-inches but well, I can hold it up to my face if I wanted to. Did I mention this monitor has a computer attached to it? The monitor isn’t just 1 pound, the entire computer is. Oh, and it’s a touchscreen machine.
It can be hard to have perspective when you’re so immersed in the world of computing (or anything, for that matter). But I often look at the iPad in awe. Again, it’s 1 pound! The machine I used day-in and day-out at school for four years had a monitor — just the monitor — that weighed 44-pounds. The resolution was far worse. The colors were less vibrant. It ran hot. It preyed on power. It wasn’t a touchscreen. Hell, it wasn’t even a flat screen.
A lot has changed in 20 years. Sometimes it doesn’t seem like it. But it has. I wonder what computers will look like in 2040.
¹ Yes, a time people still headed to college. Let’s hope we get back to that reality soon.
² I later got a Dell — as my first laptop before heading out west after college. That was one of two new pieces of computing I bought for the journey. The other? An iPod. The gateway drug…
