(Note, given the rather late uid, first time posting to
/. but am an avid reader. Apologies if anything goes wrong.)
For me it's an interesting case, as my nostalgia appears to be from between the late 90s to the mid 2000s (gee, how I feel young yet getting old at the same time). I typically read over old Maximum PC archives (I still have the issue I started from, May 2005, convinced me and my parents to get me WoW). For computing, I haven't given up my no frills (it's spartan enough to lack a volume slider) Dell keyboard that takes a little getting used to as it's more of what you call a "keyboard" with springs than those laptop style "media" keyboards which for some reason I despise. and still use an optical mouse from 2005 (two buttons and a wheel). But it's just "if it ain't broke do nothing." For a more typical nostalgia filter, I turn to, say, Need for Speed before Underground on the PC. Who says Snowy Ridge from NFS High Stakes isn't difficult?
For my mum (not my stepmother) it's an even weirder case (again more "if it ain't broke don't fix it" than anything) until last year she still used a Windows XP laptop from 2002 running IE6. She's now on the most recent Firefox using a netbook. Also she's still on $10/mo 56k dial up ostensibly a) to keep a Winnie the Pooh fan site from 11 years ago up and b) to prevent the hassle of Comcast installing cable internet to her apartment and/or its service problems, as it's either it or dial-up. (she does want to switch to DSL though) Another nostalgia-y thing: for photos it's an entry-level photo album software from '98 (she brags about how we got it at Best Buy and such with me) and as for a video player, it's freeware from '02. Hey, if
http://oldversion.com/ exists, so do the people who fantasise about old freeware.
