November monthly poll

[Computer Hope Admin]

For the month of November we thought it would be interesting to see at what age you first started using a computer. You're also welcome to mention what you did when you first started using a computer, what type of computer you started on, etc.

All past monthly polls and results can be found on the Computer Hope poll page.

[Calum]

Dude . . . you missed out the ages from 5 to 8, which is what I need to answer.

[Computer Hope Admin]

Heh. You're way too fast, thanks for pointing it out and fixed.

[Calum]

No problem, and I am scarily fast sometimes.

I was 6 I think when I first started using computers, it was an old AST machine that cost us £50 when the average price was around £500, which tells you something about its performance and lineage.
Windows 95, and I have no idea on the other specs.
Then in '99 we upgraded to a new beast with Windows 98, which lasted us until 2004 or so.  That was when I got into cleaning things (which broke Windows 98 many times) to free up some space on our whopping 10Gb HDD.
Got ripped off on the last PC we bought, and now I use my laptop and old desktop (£30, you can't argue with that) and leave the other PC to the family.

Got kind of sidetracked there, allow me to backtrack.
Basically all I did when I first used computers was use Paint to draw random things, write strange letters and print them on our awesomely noisy dot matrix B&W printer.
Then on the PC we got in 99 I got into playing games, things like Centipede, Battlezone and Blackjack came preinstalled and I got into C&C, Unreal Tournament, and so on.
Since then obviously I do a little more with computers, and I (hopefully) know just a tad more than I did back then.

[kaigun]

I'm gonna date myself here. I first used a computer in 1988. I was 27 years and in the Navy. The computer was a Zenith, I have no idea what the processor was. It booted up with a 5 1/4" floppy. Most of of my work at the time was using a word processing program called Peachtext.   

[Computer Hope Admin]

That's a great history of all your computers Calum and kaigun thanks for sharing your history as well. I actually supported Zenith computers (ZDS computers) in the past when they were merged into NEC. Although at the time I was supporting them we very rarely dealt with 5 1/4" computers.

I believe I was nine when I started first using a computer, which was an Atari ST. I primarily played games, programmed in BASIC, and chatted and shared files on BBS's.

[Jeronimo_Mc_Kinsley]

He he I'm not sure if it was asked or requested, but here'S my first time with computers:
The first time I used a P.C was as I was about 8-9 in Tanzania-Africa in school. We only played games on the computer I think...was fun.
We got our first P.C in 1999 and I was so exited as I put in the Michael Jackson CD : History, cuz I thought I was gonna c him sing and dance on the screen LOL...technology wasn't that far at that time I think. Well anyways we still have the P.C. It's a Compaq Presario sumthing with 200 MHz,40GB,32MB RAM,56k Modem,USB 1.0 x 1 and a horrible grafic-card just don't know which 1.

Now we've got 2 P.Cs and 2 Laptops. The first laptop is about 20 years old though...

[street1 (RIP)]

Okay my first was a Blazer<-----Odd manufacturer name.

It had 4MB ram and a 40MB hard drive. Windows 3.1 and
Dos 5.0.

It did not have a modem.I first went online in 1999 using
a free internet service called FreeInet.

I first posted on any forum in March 2005.The name was
computing.net.There I encountered my friend GX1_Man.

He mentioned Computerhope and I came here.

So, you people can blame him....

[PeckerWood]

I am not real folks............

[soybean]

I see we have to reveal our age here.    I was over 30 when I bought a Commodore 64; the 64 indicated the amount of memory, 64KB.  The first computer in a work environment was an IBM PC with only a 5.25 inch floppy drive,, no hard drive.  The software I first learned to use with it was LOTUS 1-2-3. 

[2k_dummy]

Univac and paper tape; need I say more?

[patio]

Univac and paper tape; need I say more?

Nope.          

[krone2800]

nYAHAAHhahah....

[patio]

I am not real folks............

Au Contraire' ! ! !

[rajkochi]

My first PC was a 486 / 4mb ram / 20mb hard disk / windows 3.1. 
It had a problem which then the engineer could not figure out... My PC used to hang whenever I start some applications .....  after several days.. the engineer found out the a module of memory was not working... so computer had no enough memory to run applications once win 3.1 was loaded.....  I lost a huge amount as memory was very costly at that time...(even the PC itself - I can buy 4 nos. of P4 for that money  today)