this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2026
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Some years ago, I was using an ancient (even then) Dell laptop that I took with me to my grandparents summer camp for two weeks vacation. Northern Vermont, landline phone service only. My dad had sent me Win 7 Ultimate and I installed it sitting on the camp deck. I called in the activation.
Not Windows, but I've reinstalled my Mac laptop OSes many times when I've swapped out a SSD. Also at camp. I did a full - unsupported no less! - install of Mojave macOS on an ancient MacPro that my aunt and uncle used to run their music and movies on. They had no internet and rented DVDs and ripped their own CDs. Once I showed my Uncle how to edit the track info in iTunes, he was off and running.
I know lots of people - older mostly - with computers that only have internet access on their phones. FFS, my mom only has text on her flip phone, (her phone provider switched over to 4G and they sent her a smartphone of some kind which she could not use, so she sent it back and they got her a 4g enabled flip phone) and I'll mail her big USB sticks with movies and tv shows on them so she uses her laptop. No internet, no electricity even, unless it's from their solar panels.
Pretty much anyone off the grid would phone in activation or roll with an OS that doesn't require it (like macOS and Linux).
Owning a summer camp, but ripping CDs?
If you have no internet but want your music as a file, that's how you go about it.
Indeed! Of all things, uncle turned me on to higher bitrate 320k VBR, highest quality .mp3 rips.
I got his CD collection after he died (his own music was lost as the drive had failed while he was in the nursing home) but before he passed, I took a few weeks and re-ripped everything for him. Gave him a junker MacBook and loaded up it and his iPod with his favorite music.
The last day I saw him - 3 days before he died, he was already seeing people that weren't there and talking to them, which is part of the dying process I'm told...
I put his iPod on him and played him his favorite artist - Miles Davis and he stopped when the song Générique (go listen to it, it is a beautiful song) came on and he looked at me - SAW me - and smiled and said it was his favorite Miles tune.
We chatted for a few minutes more and he fell asleep and I told him I loved him and gave him a kiss and left for work. Passed away the day after the Eclipse in 2024.
Best gift I got was that jazz library from him.
Grandparents owned the summer camp.
Grandfather was a union electrician for over 40 years. Retired in 1994. Made fantastic coin and bought the camp in the mid-70's, for less than $20k. Landlines only that far north into Vermont. Grandparents were both in their late 70's early 80's when the internet took off, so it meant nothing to them. Both were gone of old age by 2020.
Aunt was the black sheep of the family and her husband - the uncle - were old alcoholic hippies that lived hand to mouth. Welfare recipients with drug and alcohol problems who both died - one of alcohol fueled dementia (Koursakoff's Disease) and the other of sepsis (bone infection in the foot) from unmanaged diabetes - at the start of 2024.
Your point is?
„Ripping“ meant something else to me, and the tech fell out of fashion before I could know better.
Ah, yeah. Times and terms change.
I still will pick up old CD's at thrift stores and flea markets fr a few bucks and rip them to my computer system.
I have a monstrous music library. (don't even get me going on the vinyl LPs I've got)
Had a friend give me a used service drive from a computer repair shop and it had a customer's backup music library on it as large as my own at the time. 80+ GB of stuff.
Incorporated that in a heartbeat.
For years I did repairs and drive replacements for the kids in the neighborhood and often they'd be more than happy to let me duplicate their music libraries. I didn't charge a lot so it was a win/win situation.
That and finding a shocking amount of music on dumpster dive laptops.. esp machines from the 2008 - 2012 era.
Know a family (fairly well off) that sold a summer home a few years back and they moved on a ton of stereo equipment and one was a crazy big Sony CD changer that had a carousel of 100 disks in it.. Guess what was still filled with CD's?
Granted it's "grandma" music, and lots of stuff like Burt Bacharach and Barbara Streisand, but some of that is actually really good, solid songwriting. Not my favorite kind of music, but given the AI slop online now, it makes it easy to hear how shitty that is.
What, if I may ask, does „Ripping“ mean to you?
Am always interested in different takes on words.
exactly. you can use your phone to go to the windows activation site. you don’t need the PC you’re activating to have internet.
Where do you find the Internet on a flip phone?
The 4G one she's got from her service provider offers some form of limited access. Not sure, maybe the fancy ones have it? My mom will occasionally text me links to news items she's found.
When i'm saying "Older mostly" am talking about people in their 70's and 80's that don't use their phones for much more than texting and email.
NGL, at 61 I can't use my phone for much more than that. I just cannot SEE it well enough for it to not be a massive frustrating ordeal.
Just wait until presbyopia strikes. It's a bitch when the collagen breaks down in the body and the lenses in the eyes start to stiffen. Hit me in my mid 40's. Fuck.