Write about your first computer.

My Dad has always been a tech junkie and worked in the telecom industry through most of my childhood, so we’ve always had a computer in the house. I couldn’t tell you much about the computers themselves from back then, I just remember that my Dad liked to be an early adopter of technology.

We had DSL before almost everyone else in our area because of my Dad’s job and needing to help test it out. He figured out how to play multiplayer Doom over LAN between our family computer and his work laptop. When we got one of the early generation CD burners, my brother and I learned how to modify computers when he showed us how to open the case and swap around parts. Another perk of his job was being able to bring home copies of the latest operating systems to install, so I got to first experience Windows 95 & 98. All kinds of these things that eventually would lead to him bringing home some decommissioned computers from work and giving us one of our own so we could play games and not hog the main family computer. But in all of that I wouldn’t say any of them were MY first computer. I wouldn’t get that until I was in college.

My first computer, the one I had acquired for myself, was a pre-built model from somewhere like Dell or HP. Would have been around 2007-2008, so you can imagine what a mid-tier gaming computer was like back then and cringe at the thought of trying to use it nowadays. It served its purpose, though, and got me through college. Well, it and my laptops. I had two different laptops through college because during the first few years they loaned them out to students, but they did away with that program. I had to take a quarter off which meant turning in that loaner laptop and then purchasing my own when I was ready to come back. Those were my first laptops.

Laptops aside, I was fortunate to grow up with technology and see all the different changes happen in real-time. All those firsts led to where I am today with my computers and other gadgets.