Along with the ZX Spectrum, my parents had also presented us with a selection of computer games. Loading them was an undertaking in itself: each fed into a cassette player, its buttons held down with thumb-numbing force, while the tape whirred and spluttered and made a sound that may be roughly transposed as chkeeewschyrrrrrfffffllychkxduhuhftttt. My brother had three games: a vampire adventure named Transylvanian Tower, a treasure hunt called Espionage Island and a complicated programme that followed the process of evolution. For me, there was a solitary cassette, a numeracy aid named Count About. I cannot deny that I was at that age rather muddled by mathematics, but it only added to my sense of dismay that my computer time would involve assisting a badly graphicked monkey clamber up a tree to collect a specified number of coconuts.
You can contribute your own memories to the collection. http://howimetyourmotherboard.com/ -Thanks, Jason!
I ignore 8 critical error messages every single time I turn it on. Have of them have to do with when they changed Daylight Savings time. NT just can't hack it.
The point is, mid-90s computing sucked, I know this because I live it every time I have to use that 1996 Avid, and the limitations of Windows NT would drive me crazy if I didn't have two other edit suites rocking relatively new Final Cut/Mac Pro suites.