ZDTV Call for Help July 14, 1999

[@echosixtyfour]

There’s something really comforting about watching these older episodes, takes me back to a much simpler time.

[@Mnnyquintero]

It's called nostalgia. Im pretty sure boomers thought it was a very complicated time back then

[@Talk378]

“We talk about computers here, not politics” What a time to have been alive

[@halicarnassus8235]

It was

[@cheekothechiweenie]

I miss this time in my life!

[@edwardsmusic6195]

Born in '85. 90's was a great decade to grow up in. Playing Quake 2 and StarCraft on dial up. Good times.

[@alexwhitney1841]

Same here my friend. Simpler times we now take for granted.

[@jeffakajp]

85 here too 👊

[@mknlb50]

I was in middle school when I watched this show to help fix other peoples' computers at the time since computers were so new and not many people knew how to troubleshoot. This show was indispensable for many people including myself.

[@systematicallyshocked]

Same here. Then I'd end up with the "my computers not working" "OK so what's wrong?" "I don't know I thought you were supposed to" "I can't help unless you tell me what happened " "I don't know" And then the inevitable "what'd you do?" "Nothing" or "I didn't do anything", except for clicking on every email link 😂.

[@GodSaveTheUnitedStates]

The 90s was such a cool time to be alive! I was an 80s baby, so i grew up around the rapid technological progress. I was so excited when Windows 98 came out, mainly because the GUI was colorful and refreshed, i guess you'd say. CD-Rs were so expensive back then too, damn!

[@FrankTech]

Computers and internet was best from 1995-2005. Something special about that era of tech.. yea it was slow but I liked how you had to make an effort to stay connected.. now it’s all there whenever.. you had to log in and sign in and load chats and wait for pages to load. I miss those days..

[@spooksy1982]

I agree! I am building a retro pc which will be period correct towards the end of that period. Could have gone earlier but I think Windows XP was peak windows experience.

[@dylanchadderton1]

Man Leo is old now and back when I was a kid in 1999 Leo was still old 😂❤

[@matt22blaster]

Back in 1999 young christopher thought the feds were listening in when asked if he'd use the cds for mp3s

[@shanes.6227]

loved watching call for help sometimes before and after school. still watch leo today, Windows weekly. great podcast! all of the twit (this week in tech) podcasts are good if you are looking for this style of content.

[@HybridDivide]

LOVED this show.

[@lanceres5spd]

Oh man, my afternoons after middle school relived. This guy taught me so much. I miss TV when you used to learn stuff, before all the heavy brainwashing content came on post 9/11.

[@RMPANDA964]

I genuinely missed these days. When I would watch this show in High School, I would really admire Leo Laporte. It’s a shame what happened to him now.

[@Xstation20]

I miss 1999

[@sosidecop64]

I remember Leo talking about computers with 250 gb memory and he’s like “whoa! Who needs that much memory? Are you the government?”

[@systematicallyshocked]

I always love hearing them talk about memory now, always cracks me up. And old gaming episodes where the ps3 had a "massive" 80gb model that should last you for a looooong time. Heck even the 20gb original Xbox drive.

[@nessunolinux]

For the most part, we could have stopped at 500gb hard drives, 8gb of RAM, and quad core with 8 threads if the software manufacturers learned to stop being so greedy with system resources! Now a single chrome tab requires 2gb of RAM, 16 hours of compile time to build from source, etc.

[@danieljankowski6659]

G4 before G4, good times

[@DrkSnydr89]

AOL, wow. I had so many of those cds

[@paulmorley1225]

I remember calling into the show and when I posed my question to the screener she suggested her own changes to the question. I called to ask about DOCIS modems and ended up asking Leo about email attachments. I still loved the show though!

[@thisoldtape]

Interesting! They did try to keep it simple on Call for Help. Maybe they felt your question was too advanced for that audience.

[@paulmorley1225]

@@thisoldtape Well if you notice in this episode, the caller (Christopher) asked about CD Rs vs RWs and Leo acted genuinely enthused to hear the question but happened to have a CD-R disc and disc drive handy, along with a 5 minute rant about the subject. That being said, I'm convinced they had a theme they wanted to stick to and didn't want to get too in-depth with any given subject. I'm 38 years old now and haven't watched the show since I was a teenager so I am watching with an entirely different mindset.

[@sak30]

The late 90s/early 00s did futuristic minimalism far better than whatever tf we got going on now and they even added elements of the 50s/60s with the cartoony artstyles and jazz music

[@systematicallyshocked]

22:20 imagine allowing real live chats today without editing. I also love the beginning with the old guys going back and forth with the Microsoft talk. Little do they realize Chrome and Mozilla are just around the corner. Also loved the "people use IE to download Netscape" comment. Just the perfect comeback. So much talk about APIs in a marketplace thats just about to be saturated really. From that to Apple and their app store control. Good times good times. Speaking of Apple 35:30 it's nice to see Apple continuing this in their iOS with scripts.

[@DrkSnydr89]

Remind me of the days it would take 30 minutes to download a song and get mad when someone would pick up the phone.

[@NevalstersTelevisionOddities]

This episode premiered on the former channel ZDTV [TechTV, G4TechTV, G4] 25 years ago today!

[@chrisdigitalartist]

I will never know what that button says...🤣

[@precursorunderground]

"this thing that is changing the world and yet, sometimes seems like a tool of Satan!" bro you had no idea!

[@spooksy1982]

Listening to the guy from Nortel suggestion a dial up modem 'should be fine' for up to 10 people. I can remember 1996-1999 and using a 33k & 56k modem at my house and man even downloading a picture was pretty painful. A 2MB file would take 5 minutes even under the best conditions. Simpler times though - when the internet was a mystery to most people. I miss those days.

[@paulcalibur]

WoW that's Something

[@BBC600]

It sounds to me like Christopher more wanted something that would be akin to our modern USB flash drives in which case the RW might have been more what he was looking for.

[@systematicallyshocked]

If I remember correctly, cdrw having so many issues back then reading on different drives. I remember taking some to school and it wouldn't read. And the cd-r wouldn't read until it was fully closed off but once it was then of course wouldn't have any issues including data on my cd player that read mp3s. It Had issues with cdrw but none with cdr. But the caller seemed so unsure of what he wanted anyway beyond the school. Which as I mentioned I remember having some real issues with mine.

[@PaulGabrielLeongson-hx1yl]

Pasiklaban Jul 14 1999