Sneaking into the auditorium for the Windows 2000 launch rehearsal

yodon

Raymond Chen is one of the great treasures of the web.

mschuster91

> The sketch demonstrated infrared file sharing and other mobile scenarios. Remember infrared file sharing? Of course you don’t. Oh hell yes I do. Dog slow but at least it worked decently well, something I can't say about Bluetooth.

jeffrallen

I remember waiting for IR file sharing. It was SLOW.

michalpleban

Of course I remember IR file sharing! And contact beaming from Palm devices.

xfax

I am amazed at how he recalls events, issues, incidents etc. with such detail decades after they happened. I can’t seem to remember things well that happened 6 months ago. Does anyone have a system they use to help with such rich recollection?

criemen

> Remember infrared file sharing? Of course you don’t. Hey, I played with that when I was approximately 8 years old! Also: wireless printing via infrared, instead of those huge parallel printer cables.

qubex

Of course I remember IrDA.

rootsudo

IrDA was the way to transfer midi ringtones to my Nokia back then. It was so cool to have it on a laptop.

solyin

> Remember infrared file sharing? Of course you don’t. Multiplayer snake on properly lined-up Nokia phones for me.

olyjohn

Speaking of getting into Microsoft events, some buddies and I registered with Microsoft as OEM system builders when we were in high school. We would drive to Redmond and attend these events talking about various new hardware and software and would leave with bags full of swag and they had awesome Raffles giving away some expensive shiny new hardware, which we would win quite often shockingly. We had finally heard about the Microsoft store on campus, and had heard about the super discounted software. Turned out you had to be an employee. We were crushed because retail copies of Win2k were expensive for high schoolers. So we sat out in front of the store with signs "will work for cheap Microsoft software." Finally this girl came by and asked what we were doing, she was an intern or a new hire or something like that not much older than us, still in college. She went into to store and came out with boxed copies of Win2k Workstation for $20 a pop for us. We were stoked and tried to give he some cash, but she was just happy to help us out. Those were some good times. I wonder if stuff like that still happens today.

bad_username

> Remember infrared file sharing? Of course you don’t. I don't, but I do remember using my Siemens ME 45 as a GPRS modem through its infrared port and an IR USB dongle.

layer8

It’s only fitting that the peak Windows was introduced by Patrick Stewart.

kalleboo

> Remember infrared file sharing? Of course you don’t. I was at a karaoke bar in Japan the other year and noticed the remote for the karaoke system had an IR port. Next time I brought my Sony Clie and sure enough, it still worked to let you send photos and doodle on them to display on the karaoke screen. Looked up the system, it was from 2012 (but was still kept up-to-date with new songs). https://kalleboo.com/microblog/posts/113510755577334826.html

annzabelle

> Remember infrared file sharing? Of course you don’t. I am much younger than Raymond Chen, but the generation of Lego Mindstorms I used in early elementary school had us load programs onto the robot using infrared. I'd never really thought about how that worked, or why it didn't just use a USB cable directly rather than a USB cable to infrared beacon to robot, until just now.

ctippett

So many comments about infrared and the old-school tech they used it with and I'm over here remembering making two Furby's talk to each other.