computers i have owned

Technically, I didn't own the first one. As far back as I can remember, so probably by 1986, we had a IBM 286 in the basement that my dad used in some fashion for work. It only had a 5 1/4 floppy drive but we played a few well beloved games on floppy like Magic Mountain and something involving worms in a maze. I learned to type with a typing program on that computer, and everything printed out on a horribly screechy printer (but was it daisy wheel or dot matrix? I don't remember).

The next one was a Gateway 2000 486, from the days before they dropped the 2000 from the name. I think this one was acquired in 1991, and it was super high tech, with a 3 1/2 inch drive in addtion to the 5 1/4 PLUS a CD-ROM. I think I learned to play Flight Simulator on this one, because I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have run on a 286. This one also had a huge 28.8 external modem and a laser printer. It ran Windows 3.1 which later proved to be a problem, as I inherited it in 1996 from my dad and used it into my freshman year of college, in 2000. Windows 3.1 was a problem because as far as I could ever tell, it had no concept of "ethernet" which meant I couldn't hook it up to the internet in my dorm. Despite this, I was very fond of the Gateway, it was a very reliable system and I don't ever remember it producing a blue screen of death. I was sad to see it go.

Somewhat concurrent with the Gateway was a Toshiba Satellite laptop, acquired c. 1997. My sister was attending a rich-rich private school that required all students to have laptops. The Tobshiba had Windows '95, a 56.6 internal modem, and an ethernet card. It did still have a 3 1/2 floppy as well as the CD-ROM. It functioned more or less as laptops do today, only MUCH slower. My mom kept it until 2004.

I coerced my mom into getting me a new, internet compatible computer during freshman year of college. I copied all the data I cared about off of the Gateway, wiped it clean, and my mom donated it to something like a Romanian orphanage. It was replaced by a 0.7 mhz Micron that still had a 3 1/2 floppy, but also a DVD drive. It ran the abysmally bad Windows ME for a few months til my friend Mark switched it over to Windows 2000. It was accompanied by a 17 inch CRT monitor that I still use today. The Micron was also very reliable, unlike the HPs and Compaqs college friends had. I imagine I'd still be using that computer today if I hadn't hit the off switch on its power strip while vacuuming (election night 2004, a bad omen of things to come), which toasted Windows so badly I would have had to wipe the hard drive to reinstall it.

By this point I was living with D., who owned a 2 year old (nonfunctioning) Dell with one (main) toasted hard drive and one (slave) drive that he wanted the data from. We couldn't slot more than two hard drives into the Dell's tiny case, so I bought a new case and created a Frankenstein computer. It has the Dell's motherboard (the Dell having a faster processor), a new hard drive running windows with all of D's original data on it, and the Micron's hard drive as the slave drive. Other components (DVD, ethernet card, etc) are a mishmash from both computers. I put it together about a year ago and it's still happily running on Windows 2000.

The most recent and hopefully last acquisition for a while is the laptop we share, an Averatec with a super-wide screen and a 64bit processor. Its only drive is a DVD-R but it has USB ports all over the place and a built-in wireless card. Surprisingly it doesn't have a firewire port, but it has an empty card slot where I think we could add that if we ever cared to.

Looking back I think the only notable thing I missed taking part in was the Zip drive. It seemed like such a good idea at the time, but I guess CD-R came along too quickly for it to ever really take off, and then CD-R was usurped by flash drives. It makes me wonder what will come next.