Net.Bozo Field Guide Part 2: (retro) tech review

One way to identify those ten net bozos was by their tech. Looking back, you may have forgotten (or never known) some of those systems, so let's reminisce about the internet portals of 1995!

Hacking the Gibson -- "Rabbit, flu shot, someone talk to me!"

I mentioned some of the now-obsolete tech in the prior post, but let's dig deeper here:

• newbie: "AOL e-mail address, uses Performa system bought on Sears credit card." In 1995, AOL was still trying to pitch the idea of the internet in general, as seen in this ad, back when they were offering 10 free hours. Seven years later, AOL would be giving away 1,025 hours for 45 days, then up to 90 days free. And in 2004, Sears was bought by Kmart in an $11 billion deal, which might sound significant, until you see how much Microsoft spent in the mid-2000s. And that Performa? There were a number of models available in 1995, and the following year, the Performa 6360 was pitched as a low-cost multimedia Mac, shipped for just $1,499.
• knowbot: "Sun Workstation, T1 Internet connection. Claims to have taught Ed Kroll everything he knows about the Net." A Sun Ultra 1 workstation was definitely more significant than the newbie's Mac, but it was about 18 times as expensive as the Performa 6360, at $27,995. I didn't find a price quote for a T1 in 1995 (and the cost would vary from market to market), but this 2017 article states that connection starts at about $250 per month and can be as much as $1200 per month.
• t.m.n.h. (Teenage Mutant Ninja Hacker): "[What they claim:] Sun SPARCbook bought with
  stolen credit card number [What they ACTUALLY have:] Tandy 386 bought by parents for X-mas." That's a radical 640-by-480 resolution, for a mere $11,950 for the SPARCbook workstation-class notebook. The Tandy was about 1/6th that cost, and not terribly portable.
• floodgater: "Uses coin-operated computer at the Laundromat. State-of-the art robo-posting software." I can imagine that in much of the world, this sounds very dated, but you can still buy coin-operated computers. I imagine that t's far more common to find free WiFi in laundromats now.
• crotch potato (AKA the erotic neurotic): "SLIP-connected Mac II running Newswatcher for instant decoding of binary images." The Mac II was officially discontinued 5 years before the Handbook, so it'd be a second-hand box in 1995.
• techno shaman: "Potato-Battery powered PB 540C with tribal tattoo-covered pointing pad carried around in a pouch hand-macramed by Balinese tribespeople." That's the PowerBook 540c, and the potato-powered bit was probably a joke, but it's not unfeasible.
• .sig the destroyer: "Any pure ASCII terminal. Avoids Mac and Windows like the plague, cause styled text is .sig's worst enemy." I'll wimp out on this challenge, and leave the image of a pure ASCII terminal to your imagination.
• bitraker: "Toshiba laptop." $500.
• techno hippie: "Homebuilt 386 built from DigiKey parts. Runs off of solar power or cow-methane gas generator." DigiKey is still around, and digging around their site, it looks like they still sell computer parts. I think that homebuilt PCs are a bit easier to make since 1995, if nothing else for the extensive online communities of homebuilders and modders.
• net.spider: "PowerPC, PB 540C, Sony Magic Link, 28.8 modem. Working on building a toasternet in basement." PowerPC ("RISC is good"). Magic Link is an early PDA, "but it's not [just] that." 28.8 modem was a snapshot of a period between 14.4 and 56k. Toasternet is another bit of old jargon, referring to a network of inexpensive, low-powered computers, or "toasters."

There you are, up to speed on the tech of yester-year!