Tag Archives: Kaypro II

My Kindle Fire is a disappointment

Posted on November 21, 2011 | Comments Off on My Kindle Fire is a disappointment

It’s disappointing for a dozen reasons. Slashdot says it best:

“… the Kindle Fire can be sluggish. Page turns can lag. Menus can be slow to load. Screen touches can be unresponsive.”

So true, and so annoying. Not to mention that it tends to crash when I’m reading a Web page. I wasn’t planning on giving up my Kindle 2 for reading books, however. Backlit screens annoy me so much that if I have to read something long off the Net, I’ll print it out first.

I was planning to use the Fire for browsing and listening to PJTV and YouTube stuff while not near the PC and I have and will since I own one now. Amazon was honest, pitching the Fire for downloaded books, music,  movies, etc. I bought it, instead, hoping for a speedy Web browser I could use on the patio. My mistake.

At least it’s faster than my old Dell netbook, but not by much. The PJMedia and YouTube stuff often freeze while the Fire rebuffers. Just like the netbook. The keyboard is hard to use, but I wasn’t planning to do email or blog posting with the Fire.

I have read that us early Fire users are beta testing a product that will improve with time as its software is updated. I’ll be looking forward to that. Meanwhile, as one Slashdot commenter says: “$200 isn’t bad for a little Net portal,” even if it is a bit slow. Only half the price of my netbook when it was new.

Your mileage may vary.

Except for my nice Dell PCs, I have a knack for finding not-ready-for-prime-time computers. My first PC was a Kaypro II—me and scifi writer Arthur C. Clarke.

Remember the Kaypro II? Don’t feel bad. No one else does, either.

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Posted in Science/Engineering, Scribbles

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Obsolescence

Posted on May 30, 2007 | Comments Off on Obsolescence

The Seablogger, writing about his first PC, a desktop model, in 1986, reminded me of my first one, a bulky, more or less portable, Kaypro II, in 1983. Like the Seablogger, I bought the computer to write on, enchanted by the habit, acquired at my newspaper job, of writing on a screen instead of typing on paper. The main advantage, of course, was being able to quickly and simply backspace through the stuff I decided I didn’t want. No more carbon paper or Whiteout. There were other keyings for "erasing," of course, but backspacing was my initial favorite. It took weeks to learn all the commands, but it was worth it, even as the commands have changed over the years. I still have some printouts from those days, a short story or two, and the start of a diary.

The Kaypro’s builder, Non-Linear Systems, was the world’s 5th largest personal computer maker in 1983 when it changed its name to Kaypro Corp. Seven years later it was bankrupt. Shortly before that, the green-on-black screen died. Couldn’t get it fixed. So one night, after buying one of the first laptops, made by Radio Shack, I deposited the bulky Kaypro in a dumpster. I should have kept it. Might be worth something today. But it was the start, and I’ve never looked back–except to marvel that I ever wrote on a typewriter.

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Posted in Scribbles

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