My Very First Laptop

"I've been running hot. You got me ticking, now don't blow my top. If you start me up, If you start me up, I'll never stop never stop, never stop, never stop." ~ Rolling Stones

In 1997 I acquired my first laptop while working at TPI. It was a Micron TransPort Trek laptop and it was assigned to me as a company PC. It came with a beta version of Windows 98 installed. I was amazed that I had access to this beta version of a Microsoft OS before it was released!

I was so proud to carry around this Micron laptop. It really felt like having access to this machine completely validated my choice to enter into IT as a career path. I remember being completely obsessed with the device for months! It had the Microsoft Plus! 98 themes installed and I had it set to use the Space theme. Sometimes, I would just let the Space screen saver run for a bit and I would sit there and stare at this machine in my apartment.

My Windows to the World

Eventually this same laptop would have Windows NT 4.0 Workstation installed on it. I used to dual boot it between Windows 98 and Windows NT (98 for games and NT for business). Later on various release candidate builds of Windows 2000 Professional would be installed. Then I eventually just ran Windows 2000 as the only OS.

Business (NT 4) / Pleasure (Win 98)

Looking back now, it was unreal how many different applications I installed and ran on that Micron TransPort Trek. That laptop really was the tool that I utilized to change my entire life at the time.

Applications and services I would have been working with at the time:

• Visual Basic 6

• Visual InterDev

• SQL 6.5/7

• IIS 4/5

• Classic ASP to SQL

• Macromedia: Flash, Dreamweaver

• MS FrontPage 98/2000

I would also have devices installed into both PC Card slots (PCMCIA) on this laptop. The bottom slot would have a network card installed and the top slot would have a 3G modem. So, I could travel and connect to the internet/LAN at any office or hotel environment.

I wrote so much code, queried so many databases and achieved so much software development experience on this single, little laptop... it's hard to believe that it all happened on that one machine!

“Well, let me explain the New World Order. Governments and corporations need people like you and me. We are Samurai... the Keyboard Cowboys... and all those other people who have no idea what's going on are the cattle... Moooo!“