When You're (a) 64

Has it really been 25 years since the Commodore 64 has been introduced? A CNN.com Technology article, Commodore 64 still loved after all these years, says it's so. I'm one of the 17 million owners of one.

Most of my memories of the 64 are pleasant -- playing around with Basic and Assembler, starting my record collection database, going online at 300 baud, and watching my hair grow while waiting for a program to load off of the disk drive.

"Computer nostalgia is something that runs pretty deep these days. The memories that people have of this machine are incredible," McCracken (Harry McCracken, vice president and editor in chief of PC World -- no relation to Phill) said.

Twenty-five years ago computers were an individual experience; today they are just a commodity, he said.

"I don't think there are many computers today that we use that people will be talking about fondly 25 years from now."

Sadly, I think he's right.