When did you first have a computer

[AnnieC]

.I had my first computer about 26 years ago and not long before the internet started in the UK I think about 1991 There has been many changes since then both in computers and the internet and how we receive it. My first computers were desktops with towers and a heavy monitor then the flat screen LED monitors came in so much lighter in weight and brighter colours and they kept getting bigger think I had about an 18 inch one but I still had a desktop computer think I had about four of them. Then I got my first laptop and out went the desktop forever Actually my daughter is still using a desk top computer that I gave her it still works well and she said she prefers it to a laptop. Now it seems we have gone backwards to small screens with tablets and small laptops.
When I first had the internet it was dial up and I only used it in the evening when telephone charges were cheapest as it was pay as you go and oh it could be so slow and often stopped altogether.Quite a bit later we went on to Broadband on a monthy subscription so could use it much more, now we have Virgin fibre optic the best we have had yet I wonder how much more it can all change

 

[robert72]

My first computer was a mac 512 which I bought in Feb 1986. I had used a CP/M machine in the late 70s but it was my Dad's. First internet was dialup with Demon Internet in 1994.

 

[daisy1]

I first saw a computer when we got our Sinclair ZX81 in 1983. It's still in our attic somewhere, covered in dust. There was very little you could do with it and your work had to be saved on a cassette with magnetic tape. You had to program everything in Basic. It was virtually impossible to reload afterwards. I thought it was great though.

 

[robert72]

I first saw a computer when we got our Sinclair ZX in 1983. It's still in our attic somewhere, covered in dust. There was very little you could do with it and your work had to be saved on a cassette with magnetic tape. You had to program everything in Basic. It was virtually impossible to reload afterwards. I thought it was great though.

My brother had one of those. Not sure what he ever used it for, but he seemed quite engrossed with it.

 

[phoenix]

I first saw a computer when we got our Sinclair ZX81 in 1983. It's still in our attic somewhere, covered in dust. There was very little you could do with it and your work had to be saved on a cassette with magnetic tape. You had to program everything in Basic. It was virtually impossible to reload afterwards. I thought it was great though.

It's surprising what you could do on those early machines.
My OH used it's big brother the Spectum to record and analyse vibration data on the Chinook helicopter (he was an RAF engineering officer) He even got a medal and £150 pounds for his achievement. ( at the time the money was welcome but I had to subtract the cost of a new frock though and the babysitting costs for the ceremony)
Some years later he met a colleague who was trying to adapt the program for use on an early IBM pc . He couldn't fathom how OH had managed to do it on a 48k machine.

 

[andcol]

1979 - designed and built my own at age of 15 (no more than a programmable calculator in today's standards) and then in 1980 I bought a ZX80 in kit form. Terrible quality build - had to fix broken tracks on the PCB. It still works today and is worth quite a lot nowadays (unlike the zx81)

 

[ally1]

i got my first computer 10 years ago aged 43

 

[Patricia21]

We had a BBC computer in 1979.I wasnt intrested at all,I had no typing skills.
I got my lap top when I retired seven years ago and was self taught.
My children tell me I need a I pad

 

[donnellysdogs]

Commodore 32 and 64!! I think. Horrendous monsters!! Back about 1985 ish I reckon. Can't be sure though.

First mobile was an absolute brick!! Went in a shoe box. Went to help somebody at an accident and another car got involved and hit me and the brick. End of the brick but I survived and the oerson in the original accident!!

 

[donnellysdogs]

We had to pass our maths o'level a year early to get computer lessons. Now 3 year olds think nothing of timkering on a computer or mobile!!

 

[phoenix]

An amstrad cpc6128 in the mid 80's
I spent days entering a game into it in DOS and it cheated!
But if I'm being pernickety, It was the calculator I bought after leaving school.. We weren't allowed to use calculators at school.
Or, it could have been my electronic typewriter, somewhere in between

I'd forgotten that ,I bought my OH a Sinclair programmable calculator.You could laboriously programme it to do calculations that now come at a couple of keystrokes. It cost me more than a weeks salary.
Before that both of us have memories of punch cards and computers the size of a room. He used them as part of his degree,
I have not so fond memories of them. I spent one Summer holiday from college sorting the blessed things against the printouts for John Players
For those who aren't as old as us and haven't the foggiest .This is what was used to enter and store computer programmes (line by line) before the advent of magnetic storage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_programming_in_the_punched_card_era

 

[tim2000s]

We got an acorn electron in 1984 as it used BBC BASIC like the BBC micros at school. My mum and dad thought that would be best. We wanted a ZX Spectrum because it had more and better games...

 

[CollieBoy]

Local company gave our school their old comp when they upgraded.
Computing was at that time a special paper in CSYS Maths.
Then came ZX81s and Accountancy/ Comp Sci @ Uni. Then working Tech Support at Stirling Uni so mix of Apples and PCs then building my own PCs as I started to work as an acountant and moving to a blend of Finance/ IT.
The mongrels I built! : Tape Drives, 5 i/4 floppys, 8" drives I had kit to read nearly anything. Cobol / Fortran/ Machine code they all gave me nightmares!

 

[donnellysdogs]

OMG I completely forgot those I can't even remember what the game was, just that it cheated. Thousands of lines of programming I entered.
When you think, they sent men to the moon, using something with less memory and ability than a smart phone today

Did those men really ho to the moon?

 

[Mike d]

Actually, they had no more processing power than a pocket calculator (64kb) hence the 1202 alarm when it was overloaded with commands before Armstrong eventually brought Eagle in to land.

And yes, they really did land ... six times

 

[JTL]

Did those men really ho to the moon?

Ha haaaa .... that's a very interesting topic.
I

Anyway ..... my first one was a Sinclair something or other.
I seem to remember it being very rubbery.
I got it because I was interested in computer music.
Discovered that just to make the sound effect of a gunshot took forty five minutes of typing meaningless rubbish into the thing that I was copying from a tutorial .... it went to someone else as a present pretty quickly.
Then sometime around twenty years ago I got a desktop and joined the internet revolution.
I still have a desktop pc and a desk ..... laptops hurt my back.
I play around with computer music as a hobby and creating sound effects.
I can disappear into a set of headphones for a long time.
A giant recording studio and an endless number of synths and other instruments avcailable at the click of a mouse.
I prefer desktops so I can plug a guitar directly into the sound card and upgrade the innards easily.
I'm currently running a quad core summat or other.
I have Windows 7 but hardly use it as I prefer Linux for speed and stability.. no anti virus no anti spyware no defraging downloading updates configuring updates and then finally installing updates.
It just does and is.

 

[sanguine]

First used a computer in 1975 (university mainframe using punch card reader).
Used HP69 (?) programmable calculators in the early 80s at work (I think it was things like this that the Apollo astronauts used, with magnetic strips for programme storage) before they acquired a Word Processor/desktop which used ?12 inch and 8.5 inch floppy disks, way before 5.25 and 3.5 inch ones. Then we had desktops called Apricots before moving onto PCs.
Had a Sinclair ZX81 and a BBC B in the early 80s, Sinclair was rubbish but fun for a while, BBC was a good home machine for its time, especially with the add-in word processing chip.
Didn't buy a proper PC untll about 1995, went online (dialup) with Pipex a couple of years later.

 

[zand]

My kids were given a 2nd hand computer where you had to use cassettes. I had great fun splicing the tapes and re recording them so that they would work again once the little one (aged 2) had got them all mangled up. Happy days. Still they learnt their times tables on it so it wasn't all bad, and I spent hours playing Repton.

Bought a proper PC in 1996

 

[izzzi]

We used to clever in those days

 

[AnnieC]

I got my first one in about 1989 when I was 50 if I remember right it had Windows 95. There was hardly anything in the way of tutorials or lessons back then you just had the instruction manual for using the computer and that was so technical no one could understand it so by trial and error I was self taught.