25 years old, and counting
April 24, 2007My favorite personal computer of all times, the ZX Spectrum, is now officially 25 years old. Very few things bring back so many happy memories of my childhood and teenagehood (yes, I made the word up) as this little beauty and its descendants. At the time nothing seemed so mysterious and embodied the infinite possibilities of life as that tiny black box, with its stylish colored rainbow and rubber chewing-gum keys. Well, nothing except the opposite sex. Maybe.
The time I spent using it, both playing and programming it, helped develop my logical and analytical capabilities. In the end it came to mould my future career decisions more than anything else.
You don’t need to own a ZX Spectrum to feel the intense rush of nostalgia, or maybe even observe how technology progressed since those times. One can emulate these machines on its own computer and download games and programs to it with a press of a button. If you want to know more, a thriving community of both old and new users of these machines exists on the Internet: it is called World Of Spectrum.


















[...] As a continuation of my post about the ZX Spectrum, it is a reflection of the times we live in that it doesn’t sound frivolous anymore to buy a computer to play games. Not so in the eighties. At the time excuses to buy a personal computer ranged from the obvious – to help the kids do the homework – to the far-fetched – organize recipes. [...]