An affordable place in NJ?

From the Press of Atlantic City:

Lower cost of living may be driving population migration to Cumberland County

Robert Bruni’s dream of buying a house and owning a burger joint or deli fell victim to what he said was the high cost of real estate in Gloucester County.

So Bruni left Franklin Township and crossed the border into Cumberland County, where he bought a building on High Street in downtown Millville.

The first floor of the building, for which Bruni wouldn’t supply a price, is now Bruni’s Breakfast & Burgers. The upper floors contain his two-bedroom residence.

“It was much more affordable,” the 28-year-old Bruni said of property in Cumberland County, adding the real estate costs in Gloucester County were so high that “I just stopped looking at the prices.”

Real estate and economic experts say Bruni’s search for a less expensive place to live in a still-troubled South Jersey economy may be one indicator of why U.S. Census Bureau numbers show a population migration to Cumberland County from nearby counties.

Those county-to-county numbers indicate 1,435 more people moved into Cumberland County than moved out from 2010 to 2014. Many of those new residents came from Atlantic, Burlington, Camden and Cape May counties.

The census numbers show an opposite trend in Atlantic, Cape May and Ocean counties.

“My guess would be that the rentals are cheaper,” said Richard Perniciaro, director of the Center for Regional and Business Research at Atlantic Cape Community College. “In Ocean, Atlantic and Cape May, the rents have remained relatively high in relation to income.”

That could be especially true for some of the 571 Atlantic County residents who moved to Cumberland County from 2010 to 2014, Pernicaro said. Some of those residents were likely stung by an Atlantic County economy hurt by the Atlantic City casino industry’s decline, he said.

“If you are uncertain about your future, you might as well be where you can live the cheapest,” he said.

Census figures put the median monthly gross rent in Cumberland County at $978. That’s less than the rents in Atlantic, Cape May and Cumberland counties and the state.

This entry was posted in Demographics, Economics, South Jersey Real Estate. Bookmark the permalink.

47 Responses to An affordable place in NJ?

  1. Mike says:

    Good Morning New Jersey

  2. Mike says:

    Just did an MLS search for all Cumberland between $350-400K , sure do get a big bang for the buck. This one in Millville is on 11 acres with a work shop https://www.weichert.com/66446166/

  3. grim says:

    Shed and a workshop would be really nice…

  4. The Original NJ ExPat - Out too late and up too early says:

    grim – dream big. Carriage house with room for 3+ cars and workshop below, well appointed office/apartment for interviewing prospective nannies above. When my FIL was alive we used to talk about having a big house for my MIL, wife, and kids and two such carriage houses; one for him, one for me.

  5. The Original NJ ExPat - Out too late and up too early says:

    BTW, still doing updates on the Win7 BootCamp partition of my Mac desktop. I’m reiterating my position of yesterday in that even though it is real Intel “PC” running only Windows, you only get true PC satisfaction by plugging in a PC keyboard and a PC wheel mouse. YMMV, but for some reason actual wired input devices seem to work better than Bluetooth devices on a Mac running Windows (only). It almost seems like a Bluetooth trackpad or mouse has a lower priority when running Windows on Mac hardware where sometimes it works fine, but other times there is notable lag. I just plug in a cheap USB keyboard and wheel mouse to the side of one of my monitors (acting as USB hubs) and it “feels” like a real PC all day long. Also, you don’t have to adjust to the “reverse” scrolling of Apple magic keypads and mice. Years ago I used to run all these macros to swap CMD and CTL keys, reverse the scrolling behavior etc., but nothing is more satisfying than running Windows with a plain old Windows mouse and keyboard instead of the fancy $70 aluminum Mac devices.

  6. Homeboken says:

    All this seems like a ton of work to turn your apple into a PC. As for the original discussion of what to buy, this thread has me convinced that the Windows based surface is the way to go. People are spending time to turn their mace into PCs. I’ve never heard anyone want to do that in reverse.

  7. Ben says:

    All this seems like a ton of work to turn your apple into a PC. As for the original discussion of what to buy, this thread has me convinced that the Windows based surface is the way to go. People are spending time to turn their mace into PCs. I’ve never heard anyone want to do that in reverse.

    I’ve never made the conversion. Windows since 1993.

    I run some Windows specific software so I’ve never considered it. Beyond that, I have a grudge against Apple when the Ipod first came out, I got a 40 gig one. I died after a few months, as did the 2 that I bought for my siblings for Christmas. Pure pieces of crap. But where my ultimate grudge came from was I get a call from a rep that offered to connect me to a technician for money. I don’t know if they still do this but I was like, so I spend all this money on a defective product and you want me to pay you to just talk? Never considered an apple product after that.

    As far as the surface goes, I love it. I only really use it as a computer but occasionally, use it to play movies through a TV. The keyboard is attached to it 100% of the time. Battery lifetime is pretty damn good. The one big flaw is that it only has a single USB port. I bought a 3rd party attachment designed for it to help this issue but the computer would be much better with 2 ports.

    Ultimately, I needed a windows computer and I needed a pen to make answer keys with so the Surface was my best option.

  8. grim says:

    I run Windows 7 inside VirtualBox on my Macbook Pro.

    You know, the last good version of Windows…

    I have the Windows version of Office there, but seldom use it.

    You can’t easily run a Mac OS on PC hardware, that’s why nobody goes the other direction.

  9. grim says:

    I was a MS guy for a long long time. My first PC was an IBM XT clone we put together from parts bought at a computer show. I’ve probably owned three or four dozen wintel machines in the 33+ years I’ve had computers. I was also an Amiga guy for a long time, and an early Mac guy, IIfx. Funny story about running Mac’s on other PC’s, I used to bootleg Mac ROMS in the early 1990s and sell them on usenet so you could turn your Amiga into a Mac II clone, made good money.

    Recently, I think Windows reliability has improved, but PC hardware has gotten to be so cheap. In fact, it seems like mid-market PC is dead – you either have cheap crap, or very high end machines (the Mac quality clones).

    I work with lots of OEMs today. Name the big ones, I work with them. Many of them are significantly cutting back PC business, especially laptops. I can’t name names, but there will be some very surprising announcements in the next year about companies no longer making laptops.

    But, I like Mac. The reliability is great, and if you drink the cool-aid and buy into the ecosystem, it is really a well thought out platform. From phone to tv to networking to laptops and desktops, tablets, cloud, etc. Ecosystem is now where it’s at.

    If you don’t think so, watch the industry over the next year, ecosystem is the BIG THING. Amazon and Google are both making major plays – Google Home vs Amazon Echo/Alexa is going to change everything again. Google’s new mesh wifi is going to be the core of their new platform. I think Google may be the winner with Android and Pixel, where Amazon failed. MS has clearly been absent.

  10. leftwing says:

    87, PCs.

    Not nearly the tech head as others here. Stayed tethered to MS as they fit my professional usage with the software without conversion. Sounds like Apple to MS on apps is easier now but not worth the hassle to me.

    Swore off Dells – had two that went bad and similar customer service type experiences as Ben above. Last one went blue screen one day after the original warranty ran out, never had a worse customer service run around in my life which basically ended up with them telling me a big “FU, tough luck, buy another”.

    Been HP since (myself and kids, five machines total). Just upgraded myself over summer to the Spectre x360. Shopped it hard – delayed purchase until the right series of sales came along – but got the i7, 512G storage, 16G RAM, with graphics booster for under $1000. Bought directly from HP, prefer that these days.

    Pros, very sturdy especially for weight, outside is banded with metal, touch screen high quality glass. Overall feels like a high quality, well constructed machine that could take some abuse. Feels very ‘PC-like’, moreso than even my current laptop (HP Pavilion). That was important to me as I only run one machine and needed a screen, keyboard, and layout that wouldn’t stress my eyes and joints with extended use, especially on a 13″.

    Cons, the mousepad is huge and that feels a little cheap. It also runs hotter than I would have thought with the SSD. Has a fan, which I didn’t expect, that kicks in to cool. Also, battery is sealed inside but I suppose that comes with the territory for any convertible. I’m the kiss of death for fans/batteries so we’ll see how it goes.

    Overall, been very happy with HP purchases and have had no issues other than the batteries and fans after way too many hours (continuous years worth) of use. Very satisfied so far.

  11. The Original NJ ExPat says:

    I bought my first Mac Mini, one of the early Intel Macs, in 2006 just to see what the deal was, bought it used on eBay. BootCamp came out in beta shortly after that. I was yugely impressed with how easy it was to install Windows NT with BootCamp, easier than installing on any PC. Bootcamp just asked me how much of the disk I wanted to use for Windows and then asked me for a blank CD and it burned a driver disk. Then it told me to reboot and put my Windows NT disk in, then it asked for my driver disk that the Mac just created for me. It was so incredibly simple and that Mac mini became my favorite and top performing PC for years. In the beginning I used it about 80% as a PC, 20% as a Mac. I worked from home as Database Administrator for 50 different companies using a multitude of Virtual PCs and VPNs all from the same Mac running as a PC. After hours I would reboot it as a Mac and when I stopped working full time from home I eventually found I was going weeks and months without booting it as a PC. I’ve been sold ever since. I suggest taking the most expensive Mac for a 14 day free test drive. The past two Christmas vacations I bought the most expensive iMac, then MacBook Pro from the Apple Store and returned both within 14 days before my credit card statement even closed. Both times, I just handed it back to them and they refunded me no questions asked. Over the years I’ve convinced more than a couple hi tech guys to switch to Mac because you actually get two computers in one. If you really know your stuff, you can backup, repair, or replace your PC partition from the Mac side and vice versa. If, OTOH, you have absolutely zero interest in ever even trying a Mac, the Surface Pro running Windows 10 is a great machine. I’m getting one for my 80 year old MIL to replace her 2006 laptop. She’s too old for a Mac.

  12. The Original NJ ExPat says:

    How quickly we forget. I mean Windows XP, which I used exclusively for about a decade.

  13. Juice Box says:

    Piece of cake to run OS X Sierra virtual Inside of Windows or bootable off a USB, there are even complete projects out there you can BitTorrent although I would not recommend do to the chance of malware.

    Google install-macos-sierra-virtualbox or /install-macos-sierra-virtualbox

    for directions.

  14. soutwin says:

    Now this is affordable …..4br 1 1/2bath on 35 acrs https://www.weichert.com/66659053/

  15. leftwing says:

    Grim, re: ecosystem. My kids were diehard Apple fans solely because of the iPhone, at the time THE suburban school status symbol. As they got older and cared more about the inside and less about the exterior they both moved to Android/PC.

    The push over the edge came on music, where the Apple ecosystem was so closed they just gave up. I experienced the same thing at about the same time. I had downloaded my entire CD collection to an iPod quite a while back and wanted to upgrade. Hard burned, over a thousand CDs. Apple effectively locked my music, I couldn’t get them off the old iPod. My oldest, smarter than most in these matters, could not find a way to spring it. The kids had similar experiences with their iTune music and just gave up on Apple and went Android/PC.

    Technology has moved on since then, lol the cloud and streaming services were just on the horizon. It will be interesting though to watch the competing ecosystems handle the question of how to retain their own proprietary system while at the same time not being so closed as to lose a consumer in total because he doesn’t want specific component(s) of that one particular system.

  16. leftwing says:

    “Now this is affordable …..4br 1 1/2bath on 35 acrs https://www.weichert.com/66659053/

    Need to replace the corn rows with hops.

  17. The Original NJ ExPat says:

    My first Personal Computer was neither a Mac nor a PC. It was a DEC Pro, the same one that they used to make Freshmen engineers at Stevens buy in the mid 80’s. A guy who worked for in ’85 bought one for $1000 and then spent another $1000 for a Venix operating system (that’s right, a Unix OS cost a thousand bucks in 1985 dollars!). Anyway, he used it to learn C and Unix and then he became a Unix/C consultant. I bought the box and OS from him for $1000 and did the same. About the same time I had a girlfriend who bought one of the original Macs, two floppy drives, no hard drive. It was the first time I used a mouse and I wondered to myself, “Cut, Copy, Paste? Why aren’t all computers like this? (and I already knew vi). Also in the mid-1980’s my Dad got his company to buy him a maxxed out IBM PC. $6500 with CGA and EGA monitors, two floppy drives, no hard drive. It was a toy compared to the my Dec Pro running Unix. Anyway, even though I was a software engineer, I never touched Macs or PCs again until 1991. Believe it or not, I saw the red plaid “Tartan” wallpaper on a Windows 3.0 machine and that’s what drew me back in, by 1992 I was building and selling PCs, near the end of the hand-built clone days. I agree with grim that the mid-market for HW is going away, you buy quality or you buy disposable. It’s hard to believe that people used to regularly buy $4000 PCs up until the mid 1990’s. The most expensive desktop I ever bought with my own coin was in February 1997 ($4000). The most expensive laptop I ever bought with my own money was 2002 ($2500). It’s amazing the hardware you can buy today for a fraction of that. BTW, If you are the IT guy of your house, as I am, the best move I ever made was several years ago when I made everyone go Mac mini/iPad, it immediately saved me so much money and time. A Mac mini left on all the time draws 10W when idle. If any of them really needs a PC they can reboot the family room Mac mini as a Windows 10 machine, but nobody ever seems to need it.

  18. leftwing says:

    LOL on the costs. I waited on my new Spectre to drop beneath $1000 because it is my own personal ‘Moore’s Law’. Technology ought to move at a pace where I can get a near top end consumer machine at or below that price.

    I remember banking a well known international architectural firm. Needed at the time to upgrade their ‘systems’. Lent them $250k for a ‘minicomputer’ for their CAD/CAM. Put the thing in it’s own room, glass encased, temperature controlled. Looked like the King Tut exhibit at the Met. Absolute cutting edge, no one else in the field had near the computing power. c. 1989. Probably more power on my Galaxy S6 today lol.

  19. The Original NJ ExPat says:

    This is actually pretty easy, but it took a 14 year old kid on youtube to teach me how. A friend of mine from work, copying me, bought an iPod shuffle and Sony retractable headphones, but he broke the cardinal rule. Don’t leave home with it disconnected from your headphones because it is so easy to drop or lose. I’ve dropped mine enough times on the sidewalk between my front door and the car that I don’t even leave the house without them connected to my headphones (easier package to hold on to), even if I’m going to plug it into the car stereo in 10 seconds. Anyway, he lost his shuffle. After punishing himself for a few weeks, he bought a used one on eBay. It came loaded with music and you could tell by the selections that the guy he bought it from was our age, in his 50’s. Well, he had trouble erasing it (on a PC) and he gave it to me to restore to stock. I decided to see if I could capture all of the songs and import them into my library. Like I said, it took a 14 year old kid on youtube to teach me how. I’m not sure if this is the same video, but it was similar to this:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzRVHtJLzoI

    BTW, there are certain instances where operations like this are easier to complete on a Mac that runs both OS X and Windows. This is because sometimes it’s easier to access your Mac files while running Windows and vice versa.

    The push over the edge came on music, where the Apple ecosystem was so closed they just gave up. I experienced the same thing at about the same time. I had downloaded my entire CD collection to an iPod quite a while back and wanted to upgrade. Hard burned, over a thousand CDs. Apple effectively locked my music, I couldn’t get them off the old iPod. My oldest, smarter than most in these matters, could not find a way to spring it. The kids had similar experiences with their iTune music and just gave up on Apple and went Android/PC.

  20. Steamturd thinking about the remains of Hillary's umbilical stump says:

    Enjoy your move into Cumberland County. Where every other house is in foreclosure even when the economy was good. One of my close friends, a direct descendant of the Vilna Gaon (Jewish thing that I think I shared here years ago), grew up in Vineland. I’ve gone down there a bunch of times. There are few jobs and a lot of poverty. If you like vacant retail, there’s more of it down there than you could ever imagine. It’s quiet, cheap and there’s lots of petty crime. And your kids will go to school with lots of losers. Hope it’s worth it. Better off just making the full move to Delaware where there’s less poverty and better barbeque. By the way, the smoke turkey came out awesome, but I had to cut the legs off to get it to fit into the smoker. The smoked turkey chili I made (3 gallons of it) is through the roof.

  21. Steamturd thinking about the remains of Hillary's umbilical stump says:

    Everyone’s first PC (Timex Sinclair doesn’t count).

    I had a TRS-80 Model III. No Hard drives since they were like $3,000 back then. No floppy drives either. Just 16K of ram and tape recorder.

  22. Steamturd thinking about the remains of Hillary's umbilical stump says:

    I just looked it up. 2 floppy drives cost nearly 2K! $5,500 for 19 MB of storage.

  23. The Original NJ ExPat says:

    BTW, all this morning I’m running Windows 7 on dual monitors, watching an Investools WebEx presentation, and downloading Windows 10 with my MSDN subscription. All on my mid 2011 Mac Mini server, 7.7″ square and 1.4″ tall. Weighs 2.7 lbs and runs silently. I think I paid $899 for it back then with twin 500GB 7200 rpm drives and 4GB RAM. I’ve since upgraded it to 8GB RAM and I think I’ll move to 16GB RAM and put the 8GB in the family room mini. The new Mac minis are crap though, because they no longer have the tool free removable plastic cover on the bottom to access the memory. You have to buy them with as much soldered on memory as you’ll need.

    https://www.engadget.com/2014/10/19/mac-mini-ram-not-upgradeable/

  24. Steamturd thinking about the remains of Hillary's umbilical stump says:

    Everyone had either the Commodore 64 or the Vic 20. My dad made a pretty penny off of Commodore’s stock. Remember the Atari 400/800? Those were the days.

  25. Steamturd thinking about the remains of Hillary's umbilical stump says:

    ExPat…Apple has gone from being the master of Operating Systems to the master of planned obsolescence. Their stock mice and keyboards for their desktops are complete POS. I swear, they are made to be replaced within 3 months.

  26. The Original NJ ExPat says:

    I guess my first PC was really my micro-Professor, an 8 bit Zilog Z80 machine I used for my Senior Project. You had to enter all of the code in hex and it was gone when you turned it off. I had no idea until just now that the company that made it in 1981 eventually became Acer:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro-Professor_MPF-I

  27. Steamturd thinking about the remains of Hillary's umbilical stump says:

    You needed a tape recorder!

  28. No One says:

    I had an Atari 800 with tape deck data in 7th grade. Too poor for the floppy drive, and the tape was slow and very unreliable. Wrote some basic programs for it. Mostly played game cartridges on it.

  29. The Original NJ ExPat says:

    Lib – I think you are half right. Like many SW producers, their OS has gone from very tight to very inefficient, but the OS has always been “free” as long as you run it on an “approved”Apple product. They are really a hardware company and without planned obsolescence, who is going to buy more hardware, especially when the hardware is pretty good? They say you should sell toilet paper not toilet seats. Apple figured out a different model. They decide when you can no longer have any more toilet paper without buying a new toilet seat.

    My older daughter’s 2012 3rd gen iPad can no longer receive IOS updates. My 2013 $1000 128GB 4th gen Verizon iPad is still good to go, but I can’t “multi-task” like my younger daughter can on her 2014 iPad mini, because Apple “says” I can’t. I get what you’re saying entirely, and I respond by probably spending less money that I otherwise would. I don’t even carry a smart phone, just an ancient flip phone because I’m not joining screen zombie nation in the great outdoors, but there are more practical reasons. I don’t want to carry a bigger phone AND glasses AND pay a huge data bill AND no one is allowed to text me. If you need me, you call me and you talk to me.

    ExPat…Apple has gone from being the master of Operating Systems to the master of planned obsolescence. Their stock mice and keyboards for their desktops are complete POS. I swear, they are made to be replaced within 3 months.

  30. Juice Box says:

    Apple II was the first PC I used. Neighbor was a math teacher and he would bring one home from school all the time. We spent countless hours in his basement with his kids programming all kinds of neat stuff.

  31. Steamturd thinking about the remains of Hillary's umbilical stump says:
  32. Steamturd thinking about the remains of Hillary's umbilical stump says:

    Remember the Apple II p0rn. It would be two terribly digitized pictures flashing from frame one to frame two and back and forth and faster and faster. Let me see if I can find one online. It was the stupidest thing ever, but us kids thought it was the greatest.

    Here it is!
    https://archive.org/details/a2_Animated_Sex_Cartoons_French_Post_Cards_1981_Computer_Products_Intl_Side_B

  33. grim says:

    I don’t know if I buy the planned obsolescence thing.

    There are plenty of Android phones stuck in low versions of the OS.

    Like I said, I’m working on a MBP from 2009 – 7 years old – and it still looks and feels pretty damn good. Yeah, OK, I’m stuck on El Capitan, but that don’t matter much. This thing has at least a good 5 years left.

  34. Juice Box says:

    Atari 8bit p0rn. Custer’s Revenge x-men etc we had one kid in the neighborhood who had the whole collection. His dad bought him anything he wanted.

    NSFW.

    http://www.flowjournal.org/2007/06/atari-video-games-adult-freud/

  35. Steamturd thinking about the remains of Hillary's umbilical stump says:

    I remember Custard’s revenge.

  36. grim – this example shows the stark difference between Apple and PC longevity.

    With a fast processor, impressive performance, and casing that feels like it could stop a bullet, the Dell Latitude C400 (system weight, 3.8 pounds) is a capable ultraportable that meets most on-the-road computing needs. But at $2,995 direct, the C400 is one of the most expensive notebooks we looked at.

    http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,3082,00.asp

    This was the first true desktop replacement lightweight notebook. I bought one of these as a Dell Refurb (Pro-tip: Dell refurb == brand new returned item) with XP, Office Pro, and small and large leather cases in 2002 for $2500 in 2002. This model was so well loved that Dell kept it in production for years. This was great for me because on eBay and newEgg, over time, I replaced batteries, keyboard, display, internal WiFi, faster, bigger, HD and it is still in service today. I even have two docking stations (one of which takes two desktop PC cards and has SCSI II ports), and a giant battery that doubles the thickness of the laptop but lets it run about 6-8 hours unwired, which was yuge not too long ago. This machine is still usable, but it lasted me a full decade plus professionally from 2002-2012 and beyond. The only thing it lacked was a USB 2 port (it has one USB 1.0 port), but that was easily remedied with a PCMCIA card (remember those?) that gave me not only USB 2.0, but also firewire. In many ways this unit’s design was prescient to have neither floppy nor optical drive as an internal device. Both were available as external drives (I bought both), but the external drives could also be mounted in the big docking station. All in this laptop could have tipped the scales at $5,000 in 2002 with every option purchased, but because it was so engineered for longevity and produced in large volumes, the expensive bits found their way to eBay (probably not forseen by Dell) at vastly diminished prices. So for mobile, professional computing I spent $2500 in 2002 and probably another $600-$700 over the next decade to repair and upgrade the hardware
    and software. Of course, this was during the era when 1GB of RAM was more than you would ever need. When I replaced the 4200rpm 40GB drive with a 7200rpm 100GB drive(IDE) circa 2006 it was like getting a new computer for $100.

    This is the difference, or was the difference. If I bought a top of the line Apple notebook in 2002 (did they exist?) at whatever price, there is no way it could have served me a decade and still be viable wireless web surfer today, because that is just not their business model.

    There is an endpoint with Apple, and they do everything they can to pull the purchases forward. It’s worked so far.

    I don’t know if I buy the planned obsolescence thing.

    There are plenty of Android phones stuck in low versions of the OS.

    Like I said, I’m working on a MBP from 2009 – 7 years old – and it still looks and feels pretty damn good. Yeah, OK, I’m stuck on El Capitan, but that don’t matter much. This thing has at least a good 5 years left.

  37. I forgot one more thing about the C400. In 2006-2007 I could work in the car all the way from Boston to NJ and back (wife driving, of course). I had a Verizon EV-DO PCMCIA card and I could also tether it to my Sprint Blackberry as a backup. Over 300 miles I would probably have to switch providers twice. I remember once doing a major repair on an enterprise database server in Australia from route 95 at 70mph.

  38. Raymond Reddington says:

    Apple obsolescence at its best..

    https://youtu.be/eF-qX72om5w

  39. Lib – so EXCELLENT! I’ve never seen that before, but that’s understandable. In 1981 it was pre-AIDS, mid-coke, low drinking ages, and we had alternate room co-ed dorms at RU, so we had the real thing;-)

    Remember the Apple II p0rn. It would be two terribly digitized pictures flashing from frame one to frame two and back and forth and faster and faster. Let me see if I can find one online. It was the stupidest thing ever, but us kids thought it was the greatest.

    Here it is!
    https://archive.org/details/a2_Animated_Sex_Cartoons_French_Post_Cards_1981_Computer_Products_Intl_Side_B

  40. In the early 80’s a tape recorder costed around $35. I could throw a keg party for that!

    You needed a tape recorder!

  41. Custard’s revenge is a more humorous title;-) I learned to program in 1977 and then went right to college that same year. Back then the standard graduation present was an electric typewriter. Those of us who programmed did it in basements of Math centers like Hill Center at RU. Sometimes 4 Juniors or Seniors would get an on campus apartment and have a shared mainframe terminal for something like $100 per year or semester. I think even a lot of tech guys who are specifically my age largely missed out on all 8 bit home computing that guys born in the mid 60’s remember. I bought a Dec Pro (PDP/11 architecture) for one purpose, to make money. I was in my 30’s with a freshly built 486 clone before I got into any of the “entertainment” aspects of computers, but even then I was more enthralled with my Charles Schwab “Equalizer” online trading software(DOS).

    I remember Custard’s revenge.

  42. Ben says:

    We have a computer in my old lab running an old ultraviolet detector. The operating system running is Windows 3.1. It’s an old desktop and we have never shut it off. It’s on a backup power supply so every time the power went out in the building, it still remained on. The computer has been on continuously since 1998. The inside of it must be disgusting as there is a huge cantilever of dust protruding from the fan.

  43. Essex says:

    8:11 the last really large house my family had was three stories with a tennis court. Of course that was in Nazi Germany and they took that….so….

  44. Steamturd thinking about the remains of Hillary's umbilical stump says:

    Expat…I was 11 in 1981. It would not be until I was 12 that I would spend countless hours between Brower Commons, the river dorms, the Student Center on College Ave and the ZBT and Peek frat houses. 4 of my sisters and 2 brothers are RU alum. I was pretty much raised on Easton Avenue. I remember Greasy Tony’s and that cool mural which mimicked the view of the Raritan in that electrical building on 27. I also remember how seedy New Brunswick was. I could tell you stories of some pretty crazy frat parties too. I went to one where everyone wore Depends and the bathroom was locked for example.

  45. Juice Box says:

    Just back from the Pete Yorn show in the city, after party was jumping but alas the babysitter could not stay later. NYC is way way over gentrified, lots and lots of Chinese money, it’s going to end badly in the next recession.

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