The coming of the Apple
My first experience of computers was an Apple 2 at my Mum's work, sometime in the early 1980's. Then it just seemed to have great games on it. Subsequently they had Apple IIe and an AppleIIc. I was allowed to use these computers and did a lot of Apple Basic programming which was very good practice for making websites as it turns out! I ended up owning the IIc and IIe when they were thrown out as obsolete.

Great times were had holding the paddles (2 wheel things, one for each hand, acting as a joystick) playing Choplifter and Breakout! Also all the keyboard games such as Trolls Gold were great fun.. then! These were the days when you bought a book full of programs and typed them out word for word to make a new game to play. In the end I had quite a few. Having to type 'catalog' to view the items on the 5" floppy and then "run 'so and so'" led me onto making my own programs and I would spend hours fine tuning my many little creations.

In the end I got rid of them as the green screens drove me mad, especially the tiny one on the 2c. And the software was getting so old. One day I switched it on after using my Amiga and I thought that it was so rubbish having old computers that I sold it all.

The coming of the Spectrum
At home I was bought a Sinclair Spectrum when I was a kid and rather than just play games on it I had a good go at programming with it. I also had it put into a proper keyboard. Many hours were wasted on those games I loved the flight simpulator F15 Eagle and all the old favourites: Attic Attack, Sabre Wolf, Jet Pac, Luna Jetman, Manic Miner etc etc.
Beyond games and basic programming it became pretty useless in the end and I couldn't handle all the loading from tape anymore, as I never got any drives for it.

Old PC's fill a gap
I owned some chucked out old PC's and did Dos and Gwbasic programming for a bit but they were so old that they had to go in the end with no real software available anymore. I did have a lot of fun using Dos and getting Gwbasic to do fun things. It was nice to have a harddisk after the old Specy.

The coming of the Amiga
Things got more interesting when I got an Amiga 500plus. Then I stepped up to 1200 which had better graphics. I modified this 1200 with a lot of upgrades but went one step too far when I bought a big tower case and card slot motherboard (for 7 cards) including a Delfina Soundcard. While trying to get all this to work (it turned out that the card slots were not compatable with the Delfina) I was jiggering the whole lot (while switched on!) and the stripped wire power lead fell out the back of the Amiga and blew the whole thing up. I was unable to afford to buy a replacement so I sold all my a1200 stuff and bought an Amiga 2000 which I put the Delfina Soundcard into. To be frank the 2000 was useless due to the graphics chip, even with the '030 processor as 70htz. Which made it a fast computer (at the time). I did have a lot of fun at the Amiga stage, making music, playing games and using it for serious actvities. Even making first steps onto the web with the 1200 and 2000. I spent hours and hours on my old Amiga and I look back at it with fond memories, sometimes I wish I had never sold it (or blew it up).

The coming of the PC
They had been useless for a long time but the PC was starting to make my old computers look silly. So I got a cheap Pentium 100. Which was so slow but ultimately could offer no more than basic word processing, basic web design with Netscape Composer, slow internet and a couple of old games, it had to go!

This was followed by the Compaq EXm 933mhz which I put in a graphics card and Creative Soundblaster Audigy Platinum card with Drive for the 5" bay. With this I was finally able to make music, do serious web design and fast games. Programming seemed to have died on its feet!

The coming of the Laptop
Then to the laptop! The EXm is huge and I wanted to travel. Laptops are now as loaded as desktops, so why not? The HP compaq nx9010 I had is faster than the old EXm, o.k. I only have a 15" tft display, but it displays full to the edges and appears little different to my old Tatung 17" monitor.

Lightning Strike!!
The nx9010 is no more. During a thunderstorm there was a surge down the phone line and the laptop was zapped! Luckly my house insurance covered it and I got a replacement, this time a Compaq Presario R3114EA which was slighty faster than the old laptop and more expensive than the old one, perhaps not quite as slinky though. As usual it had it's little raft of compaq faults such as the USB mouse did not initialise on startup but was also better than the HP in that the fan doesn't fire up every 30 seconds and make a right racket.

No computer!!
In March 2005, the Compaq went wrong and I had no computer at all! I sold everything I had computer related. I can't afford to throw another £800+ away on a computer. I now rely on computers at work, and I have to say I am not worried. I was chained to the thing day in day out so no I can go home and forget them. Recommended!

I went anti-technology and bought a sharp font writer from ebay at £1.20

Work
I have used / use Apple Macs, various PC's and Unix. My whole working life has been based on computers AND they didn't let me study computers at school as they said my mathematics wasn't good enough!!! I have had to use the computers at work in the cyber cafe there since the Compaq Laptop went. There I got used to Dell desktops. Also some of the computers let you install stuff so I can do a certain amount of stuff even without a computer at home.

Up from the ashes
In May 2006 I got a second-hand laptop 1gig (Dell C610), oh how the mighty have fallen! Still now that I don't use Dreamweaver or Photoshop anymore it does o.k. so after over a year with no computer (apart from using them at work) it is nice to have one again, even if it does remind me that I have had better. Although I am very impressed with the Dell make, much more a quality item than the other laptops I have had. I would certainly go for Dell again. Once again I can do mp3's, making music, games and webdesign. However the laptop is not on the internet due to financial problems and I transfer data between the work computers and the laptop with a USB memory stick.

Dell Dimention 9200 Desktop
A couple of weeks later the Duo Desktop arives, at just over £900 it was cheaper than the laptop.
Dimension 9200 Intel Viiv Technology Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.40Ghz, 1066Mhz FSB)
Dual Channel Memory 2048MB (2x1024) 667MHz DDR2
Hard Drive 320 GB
Vista Home Premium
20" Widescreen Ultrasharp Flat Panel Display 800:1 contrast
Nvdia GeForce 7900GS 256MB Graphics card
Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme
TV Tuner Analogue/Digital
DVD re-writer
Logitech 5.1 Surround Speakers
Saitek Cyborg Evo Joystick

I use this as my TV, DVD player, Stereo. It is a complete home entertainment computer.

Currently on my harddrive (Feb 08)

Apple 2

Apple 2e

Apple 2c

Sinclair Spectrum

Commodore Amiga a500 plus

Commodore Amiga a1200

Commodore Amiga a2000

Compaq EXm

HP Compaq nx9010

Compaq Presario R3114EA

Sharp Font Writer FW-700

Dell C610

Dell Inspiron 6400

Dell Dimension 9200