My second desktop computer was a Gateway -- probably purchased around 2002. That is when I went from a dial up modem to hi-speed internet from the dreaded Comcast. In 2002 in the northwest suburbs of Chicago the only choices for hi-speed internet were AT&T or Comcast, and AT&T was not yet available in my suburb. I have been a Comcast customer (for better or worse) since 2002.

Gateway used to have retail stores, and I took several classes at their retail store near me. All of the classes were free of charge.

The first computer I worked with was a large main frame at our university - batch processed. We were given 20 seconds of user time for each problem we had to solve for our class in learning Fortran IV.

The first computer I actually owned was an Apple ][e in 1982. Eventually had a dot-matrix Apple Printer, two disk drives, a CPM card, and a memory expansion card on which I was able to afford an extra 128K of memory. Computer User Groups were quite the thing to belong to back then just to learn how to do simple things just beyond loading AppleWriter as well as starting to learn about the ARPANET AND DARPANET.

In the mid 1980s I had a job requiring making huge proposals for jet engines, parts, tools , support etc. I was introduced to Wang PC-001 (Professional Computer) at work. Bought one myself used for around $3000. The Monitor CRT weighed about 20 pounds and had a black screen with white characters. Had two 5 1/4 floppy drives. Added a hard drive. Used a spreadsheet program called Multiplan. The thing weighed about 30 pounds and took up half my desk. Had a printer with tape and paper with holes for the sprocket drive. I think my word processing software was called Officewriter. No Internet access. Data transfer by me carrying floppies from work to home and back.

My wife hated that machine.

Just bought my wife a new IPAD Mini 4 yesterday with 132 GB for $279.

My first computer was a IBM PC Jr with 128K of RAM that cost me about $2500. In 1985 I traded my brother-in-law, a computer sales rep, a highchair for a used MAC 512 with a 20 Meg hard drive. Used a telephone modem at 2400 K speed to get on the web and use Prodigy - where I got my computer moniker chuckinca (people then were always asking where you were from so I put it in my online name).

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Our first computer was an Apple II in the late 70's. We had a dot matrix printer and the monitor only showed 40 characters on a line. When my agency was going to get an IBM pc I was a social work supervisor but was one of the few people in the agency that was familiar with computers so I got the job as an Administrative Analyst. The agency purchased an IBM pc in the early 80's and eventually we purchased an external 5 MB external hard disk. I remember the sales people at the computer store said that we would never fill up that hard disk. That was the era when 1-2-3 spread sheet came on floppy disks.

How times have changed.

John

ps - Bought a Macintosh when they came out in 1984.

My first 2 computers were DIY (solder in all the parts), an RCA COSMIC ELF 1802 based, and a little later a Zilog Z-80 based, both had 4K of memory (around $400 each!!), both used a cassette recorder for program storage, and both were programmed in hexadecimal machine code.

Then came a Radio Shack model 1, I built my own expansion interface, and a speed doubler circuit. This was expanded include my first hard drive 5meg at a cost of around $400.

Then came an Apple 2, actually a black apple (made by Bell & Howell?), had to get one of these as I had a side job writing custom software, and the customer had Apple PCs.

Then there followed a string of increasing larger IBM based PCs over the years. While I did do some custom computer interfaces for the side job, in general I gave up building my own after wire wrapping a 128 kb memory card, around 50 ICs, and lots of connections, but worked like a champ for years.

Continued to write custom software, this time for my employer (gave up the side job), and eventually ended up with a patent of some of it.

I still dabble with some of the small single card computers.

I honestly do not remember the internet provider, both I do remember the joy of going from 300 baud, 1200 baud, then 28.8k baud, and all the way to 56k baud.
fond memories.

in 1984 Apple had a weekend test drive with a Mac and printer. Took it home for the weekend and computerized a non profit mailing list of over 2,000. External HD from Corvus was the size of a small printer! I created a database in less than an hour. The Mac without a HD was $2,500. Been a Mac guy ever since. in 1989 my employer let me take a Mac home and I remember using Apple eWorld for dial up. Very cute Town Square interface. in mid 1980s ought a $2,500 Leading Edge clone but sold it in a few years. Today have 6 Apple products!

I go way back, my first was a Commodore 64 (I think I remember it right).

This was a great walk down memory lane. Thanks for the great question and answers.

My first computer was an Apple II that I bought in 1980. I sold it a year later when the IBM PC came out. My first Internet provider was a small local ISP in the Mid-Hudson Valley. idsi.net that I signed up with sometime in the early 1990's. Most of those small, independent ISP's are gone now. Now I get Internet through my cable company (Optimum in NY and Comcast here).
--
Bob C

1980 Atari 800 + 1st colored TV. Kids say it was the best Christmas ever. Never told them it was my present also. Still have the 800 and all that goes with it. Very first was 1966 at UB. Main frame using key punch cards.

Looks like I am the only one here mine was an Atari 520 st. 512 K of memory no hard drive. It used the Motorola 68000 processor the same as the Mac. I was the computer emulator in our club and could run IBM xt software and Mac software using emulator hardware and software. It ran Mac software faster than a Mac but was painfully slow as a IBM xt but so was the xt. I added 2 megs of memory and a 30 mb hard drive which I thought I would never need more.

This was when AOL was just starting up as the only graphic based internet site. My aol username was my name with no other letters or numbers added.

Commodore VIC 20.

TRS-80, then commodore 64. Later PC-XT with Genie.

My first real computer was the 64. Ya know we're dating ourself just knowing what a Commodore 64 is. I had a VIC 20, but it was barely a computer.