Hi,
I built my first computer in 1981, with a soldering iron. It was a zx81 with 16k ram pack.
I had a book on machine code and regularly typed in the code to get programs to work.
Ever since then I have had computers at work and at home - but none of them have been truly 'useful' to me in the way computers in the movies are portrayed.
I remember in the 1990's building a website that had rss feeds on it to show various weather and news feeds. It had a clock and links to lots of useful websites. I had this load at startup, and to be honest, this was more useful than my current windows 11 machine is to me.
I'm soon to be retiring and I want to spend some money on a new computer that will be a useful personal assistant. I don't want work integration. I don't want to play games. I want the thing to remind me of upcoming important events (like birthdays and car tax anniversaries), to let me know when I need to set off to get to the next meeting in my diary, and show weather information at certain geographical locations.
It would be good if it could keep track of my movements and possibly health statistics. I wear garmin devices that measure certain stats, but would be happy to expand this.
It would be useful if it cound respond to my voice (home automation).
When I'm not using it, I'd like to put its computing power to use doing useful projects like Folding@home.
Are there any forums or hobby groups that are working on optimizing computers for this type of thing?
