WordPerfect. A better word processing program than Word, but in the freelance world you need to communicate with your clients in the programs they use, whether you like it or not. Even though I’m a Mac guy, I can’t bear to deal with Pages, since it would mean having two copies of each file and all the errors and management that would entail. For the record, I think it’s been all downhill for Microsoft since Word 5.1.
Hand-coded html. A little bit of html knowledge is helpful even with today’s more sophisticated tools. But holy cow, I did a screen grab of my hand-coded website as it looked back in 2001, and it is a horror of clunkiness. As neither a designer nor a computer whiz, one small error would destroy the formatting of the entire page. This is graphic evidence that I’m glad: 1) I invested in a freelance graphic designer to create a professional-looking page, and 2) I changed my company name. (Thanks to Katharine O’Moore-Klopf for the inspiration, via a retro website post in her recent Facebook #tbt.)
Zip drives. Since this was my backup method of choice in the days before Time Machine, I still have a couple of my old Zip disks hanging around with old freelance jobs and tax forms on them, according to the labels anyway. Don’t ask me why I haven’t tossed them, since the drive long ago bit the dust.
Palm Pilot. I was goaded into purchasing one of these by one of my old bosses, who swore by it. I honestly never got the handwriting recognition to work properly, so it was basically a hip paperweight. The nicest thing you can say about handhelds is that they pioneered some of the aspects incorporated into current smart phones, and so the trial and error was important to evolution.
Tethering. I’m no hacker, but I like to work offsite, so I needed to figure out how to get my crappy cellphone to serve as an internet connection for my laptop when I wasn’t at home. At first, Verizon made it easy (and free), but then progressively made it more difficult with each phone upgrade, and, eventually, impossible. And oh my stars and garters, was it slow. Amazing to think that my iPhone Personal Hotspot functions at darn near cable internet speeds as long as I’ve got a 4G signal.
Dial-up internet. Ah, yes, the days of screeching modems, Mindspring, AOL, and Prodigy, and “free” signup disks cluttering up the mail every week. Every time I get itchy about pages not loading instantly, I need to remember how far we’ve come. And I’m also reminded every time I get an email from my neighbor who still has a @prodigy.com web address. I’m pretty confident he has running water and electricity, but based on that addy, I’m not 100% sure.
In the comments: What are some of the tech tools you’ve used in your freelance business that seemed essential at the time, but now make you laugh…or cringe?
For another walk down memory lane, see last year’s anniversary post, “14 years of freelancing.”
Yep, I remember all of them. Back in the day, I was quite proficient at using WordPerfect. That was the package to know about …umm… years ago.
Oh gawd. They’re all too familiar. 🙂
I remember thinking I couldn’t live without a floppy drive. Remember those disks?
MS Works. I wouldn’t own a computer without it. LOL
Mouse pads.
Twenty-pound monitors.
Don’t forget about CompuServe…
Jake, I also had a zip drive. It was actually pretty cool for its time.
And somewhere I still have about 50 3.5″ diskettes with old files from the 1990s.
For me, it’s the thumb drive that I used to use to transfer documents between my desktop and my laptop — back before the awesomeness that is the cloud!
Jake,
Just got a new computer and was cleaning out the box where I toss extra cables and stuff. I found not only an old zip drive but also old 5-inch and 3-inch detachable drives. I got them so I could work with the older formats some clients were still using. I actually did use them fairly often until everyone got caught up. Also recently found a box of blank 3-inch disks way in the back of a storage cabinet. When I got my first PC they cost $4 apiece.
I still use WordPerfect in Windows, as well as Lotus 1-2-3. I just have to copy and paste into Word when submitting copy to clients.
But I make PDF’s of invoices, and anything where the client doesn’t need the actual copy.
Among other things, I have thousands of macros which are individual files in WP, but are all on one file which is different on different computers in Word. Plus I like the fact that reveal code lets me see just what I’m deleting when hitting backspace, is it a style or a letter.
I can also easily create windows where I compare English text with Spanish text with a literal translation of the Spanish text. I can never get Word to do it correctly.
I use Macs for design, but of course it’s been years since there was a WordPerfect for Mac.
I meant columns:
I can also easily create columns where I compare English text with Spanish text with a literal translation of the Spanish text. I can never get Word to do it correctly.
Jake, thanks for the walk down memory lane! Boy, how far we’ve come, ha? What about the good ‘ol fax machine… the “thermal” roll paper, the incessant connection tones and the choppy, halted printing process that finally spit out an often hard-to-read, purply-grey, printed page! Glad they have given way to PDF files and email.
I may beat you on # of years on the planet, Jake; however, you have more than double my time as a freelancer. 😉
Of course, that doesn’t mean I cannot relate to your antiques. 🙂
@Lori, yeah, I always hated mousepads. For a long time, I used a keyboard with a trackpad for exactly that reason. And in my last corporate job, in the late ’90s, I had a client who still insisted on sending us 5 1/4 floppies…which, in a Mac-packed office, we had no easy way of reading.
@Laura, WordPerfect *is* still around, as Dan points out–I’m sure it’s just like riding a bike, right? And definitely Compuserve could be added to the list.
@Dan, that’s interesting to hear WP has those additional uses. I guess it still has Word beat for certain tasks!
@Sheila, I’ll give you a call when I want to unarchive my Zips, LOL.
@Mariella, yes, the cloud has been an enormous upgrade from physical drives of all types.
@Eileen, I never owned a fax for my business, but I did have an eFax account for a while, up until 4 or 5 years ago. After not receiving or sending faxes for a year, I dumped it.
@Cathy, my tech-savvy kids make ME feel like an antique.
Jake,
Remember when we used QuarkXPress at McMurry? Oh how I don’t miss the learning curve of that program!
Shay
Haha, Shay, of course! Most vividly, I remember how the graphic designers would go ballistic (rightfully so) if we editorial types touched anything but the text.
I tell ya – I STILL lament the fact that WP didn’t take over Word. I hate Word to this day – every new configuration they come up with gets worse and worse — WordPerfect – I could do ANYTHING – simply and easily and beautifully.
Sigh.
And hey, how about a shout out to DOS? lol
I started, actually with WordPerfect for DOS – it was great!
XTree? Anyone that old? 😀
I still have tons of zip drives with my artwork on them, can’t bring myself to throw them out – don’t ask me how I am supposed to ever get/view the contents… could be some treasure on there! I did finally toss all the floppies – I think each one held one WordPerfect doc on it. Its been quite a ride, and I miss some of the simplicity from then — man, I get frustrated doing some stuff these days…
Ruth, I think you’ve explained why we hold onto those ancient disks: Surely there’s a treasure on there!
As far as DOS, that was what I used in college, but for my first job (1989) the corporate system was LaTeX. Ah, the good old days…
Jake, I remember all of these, and had floppies (the big flat ones and the little ones) too. Those were the days when monitors were heavy and screens were small and bandwidth, as we know it now, didn’t exist. In my office, we also backed up to tape drives.
I finally threw out my last zip disks and floppies a couple of years ago, and I’m wondering how long it will be before CDs go the same way.
Thanks for commenting, Sharon. I have two stacks of rewritable CDs–my backup method after Zips and before Time Machine–that I haven’t touched in years. About the only time I use the CD drive is for TurboTax!
Your article made me feel a little nostalgic. WordPerfect was the first word processing program I ever learned to use. Over the years, I’ve become quite proficient in Word, but I’ll always have a soft spot for WordPerfect…
This probably falls into the “software” tools category but I remember copy editing hand-set letterpress galley sheets.
@Debra, indeed. I don’t imagine I’ll be nostalgic about Word when I write my anniversary post a decade from now!
@Sally, I’m thinking hands are hardware. But yeah, ye olde days of wax, repro, and X-acto knives were something else. And a good reason not to cross an art director…