Found a few links via a couple of slashdot blurbs.
My mom ran her company and the family finance from an Osborne. She refused to upgrade long into the IBM era, and so kept an Osborne alive from an eventual stockpile of nearly a dozen of the damn things.

Anyway, here's a really good 4-page article-
http://technologizer.com/2011/04/01/osborne-computer/

and here's an interesting comparison Osborne vs iPad
http://www.stormdriver.com/blog/the-tech-archive-30-years-of-mobile-computing/

/anyone want an Osborne?

I already have one :-)

Rescued it from a ditch in 1994 and got it working. The cpm disk still works, as does the word processor, but spacewar no longer loads :-(

I never thought of you as a museum curator, Rory.

Heh - my attic seems to fill up with old kit. In addition to that I have some old SGI Personal Iris's, an Indigo and an Indigo 2, a Dragon 32. I did have an RS6000 for a while but it was just too big so it took up space in the garage.

I love the old kit!

EDIT - Hoarder, rather than curator :-)

That's all a matter of presentation.

I've said that exact same thing. I have a large barn with lots of stuff neatly shelved and sorted. If I stacked all the stuff to the ceiling in a two bedroom apartment with only paths to get around everyone would say I had a problem, maybe I do

That is so true it made me laugh. Thanks!

I have to admit to a barn, a shed and a garage, but otherwise same description...

I dream of such things!

I have 2 sheds, but one is for the kids and the other is only big enough to hold my gardening implements...need more sheds!

Haha- a man and his shed. Classic!

I just want a house with a 2-car garage and side-yard access. Ok, I want a couple sheds, too.

The dark side of collecting.
One of Mom's storage yards. I think I'll have to quit my job in order to take care of everything when she's finished collecting.
The google map image is old- you can't drive through the property any more.
And yes, all the buildings are full to the rafters.

/le sigh

Wow, hopefully the neighbors are not having issues. That’s the biggest problem with a “collection” like that. Growing up the neighbors in my parent’s subdivision never appreciated the collection of “classic” cars my parents had up on cement blocks.

Looking at this from a scrap metal point of view, seeing prices are up, that is a lot of cash. Last spring I got $1,200 in one day just for removing my “outside collection.” It was just a couple piles of scrap metal roofing.

Is that a cement truck? Now that’s cool. I only have an old cast iron belt driven 1.5 yard mixer. That of course I have never used. But I will one day!

My "uncle" (just a family friend in reality) had the best collections ever. He had thousands and thousands of vinyl 45s in his garage. He had 8 pipe organs in his house. His garage and basement were overflowing with WWII memorabilia. He had filing cabinets filled with pistols from every nation, C-rations, K-rations, uniforms, sabers, daggers, practice bombs and practice torpedos. It was amazing. He had the flag mast from a boat (something small, a patrol boat maybe?) in his back yard that flew the flag every day until he passed away.

That does sound cool. Since my dad was in WWII, my grandfather in WWI (also on the Panama Canal build) and my great, great grandfather (got a cool picture of him with that blank stare they had on super old pictures) was in the civil war I have a few items but not as many as I’d like. And yea, my family seems to wait until their in their 40’s to have kids.

Growing up we only had two pianos, an organ and a drum set in the living room. My mom would have loved a pipe organ. She was the organist at several churches during her lifetime.

It is, indeed, a cement truck! The owner parked the truck, a dump truck, and a backhoe in the yard when he was running his one-man cement company. He has since sold the other equipment and moved to Oregon or some such.

I'm sure the refuse and detritus from the eventual clean-up of the property will bring in some compensation, but emptying things out before then will be the majority of the work, most of it thankless.

Unreal, Stew! You'll need a team of volunteers, or maybe just announce a yard sale and make sure you are on the gate to give a price as people come to you with whatever swag they find:-)

For some time, she has had the idea to sell off the stuff in her own style of second hand shop. She seems to enjoy the collecting more than the distributing, however.

When my parents died it took me a year to go through their house (it didn't help that it was 300 miles away).

Besides trying to separate the good, trash, and sentimental valued items my mom liked to hide $100 bills in the stacks of junk. So I went through everything!

It was a pain but going through the stuff but it was kind of nostalgic.

In the end an estate auction cleared out the stuff I didn't want.

After another year of restoring the house I finally sold it right when the housing prices tanked. Looking back on it now I should have auctioned everything off in the first week. That probably would have saved me money and time.

Some of my siblings are of the opinion that bulldozers should be called in during the first week and all work would then be finished in two weeks.
Somehow I'm affected by my mother's sensibilities (insensibilities? non-sensibilities?) and have the strange compulsion to handle every object d'junk personally, even though I recognize the futility and waste.

Of all the buried treasures at that yard, the property itself is the greatest one. I would feel remiss if I let a few others slip by, though.

Ah well, she's quite fit still and this 'project' won't need my attention any time soon (God willing). All this shuffling of stuff does keep her mind and hands occupied, which is the greatest benefit to her health in general.

You sound exactly like my wife, and her parents. Nothing can be thrown out without inspection for sentimental and monetary value. One of her grandmothers also had a penchant for hiding money in stuff.

I'm so reminded of Carlin's "Stuff" routine.

I look around my house, and I can count the number of things I'd like to keep fairly easily (in no particular order of importance):

• bikes (though some need selling or replacing)
• kayaks (and assorted gear)
• hockey gear (only because it's expensive to replace)
• the various momentos (generally from deceased grandparents, or travel) contained in a curio cabinet
• cameras (and a couple hard-drives of photos)
• cats
• wife and daughter

But then, I've never lived in one house for longer than 5 years, so I got quite used to ejecting the detritus of life on a regular basis. (And I still have a lot of crap that needs binning.)

"Running light" is a great lifestyle. I managed it while I lived abroad.
But the old saying about apples not falling far from the tree is true.
I may laugh about my mom's collection of Osbornes, but I'm proud to have two spare empegs that are just collecting dust.
Now that I'm getting a second hand Droid1 phone set up well, I'm tempted to jump on that bandwagon, too. ah well...