Return of the geek?

It’s been a good while since I’ve picked up an issue of PC Magazine again. In my geekier days in high school I used to buy the US edition every chance I got because it was still relatively cheap. I used to salivate at the prospect of 200MHz Pentiums and blazing fast modems and expansion cards. Yes, I used to be a techie geek.

I’ve become pretty lax with following computer technology trends now, because of the sheer futility of doing so. In my experience with reading PC Magazine from 1995-1998, I’ve become exposed to just how ridiculously quickly technology becomes obsolete.

My computer has built-in graphics which don’t offer hardware 3D acceleration, and I was curious as to which AGP cards should I be getting. My 56K internal modem also sucks—it’s been stuck at 21.6K or lower for a couple years. Imagine my mild surprise when I asked a local computer store and found out a replacement internal modem could be mine for just PhP500, cash. I remember our old US Robotics 28.8K Sportster external modem costing PhP7,000 around ten years ago.

So out on a whim, I leafed through the magazine stand today and picked out the local edition of PC Magazine, which just so happened to feature a handful of 3D graphics cards on review.

I have my remarks. Most irritating of all is that many of the products they reviewed (yes, including the 3D graphics cards) didn’t have the price posted along with them. C’mon, that’s standard operating procedure with US PCMag.

Overall it’s pretty helpful, though a lot thinner than how its bimonthly US counterpart used to be.
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I’m glad I’m back to 95% of my usual energy. The doctor gave me a clean bill of health too. In the past two days I’ve even played a lot more Dance Maniax than I ever used to.

Now to finish my remaining hours with PETA...which aren’t all that many. Miss Queng was already telling me to forego my remaining hours as it’s pretty much the summer vacation already, but I promised to finish 200 and I intend to make good on it.