How many computers have you owned?

In the early 90s I had an Amiga 600, and in the mid 90s a playstation... but those don't really count. The playstation certainly doesn't.

In the mid 90s there were a bunch of apple laptops and a few PC laptops about courtesy of my dad, who was a school teacher and was quite into technology. I had my first encounter with the internet some time in late 95 or early 96. I kinda knew what the internet was for a few years before that, but this was my first time actually being on it. It was on an apple powerbook with an external 14.4 kbps modem, connecting via compuserve, an early UK based ISP. Netscape navigator was the browser, altavista was the home page (google wasn't even a twinkle in Page & Brin's eyes). I looked up cheat codes for Doom, and found my first few online pirated songs quickly enough - as open downloads on people's sites (nobody in the industry was concerned about it yet). I knew within a day of first using it that the internet was going to get huge and change the world, but I didn't anticipate how fast this would happen.

The first PC I owned myself I got in june 1998, just before my 18th birthday. It was a 200 mhz MMX-equivelant running a cyrix CPU. It had a 2.1 GB hard drive, and came with windows 95 on it. I soon installed windows 98 instead.

In 2001 I replaced it with a 1.5 ghz AMD athlon. Initially running 98, I replaced it fairly soon with XP.

This did me through most of the 2000s, but by 2009 it was well out of its depth, so in late spring 2009 I got a HP quad core machine (4 x 2.5 ghz). The main benefit was that it allowed me to do HD video work, which my older 2001 machine couldn't handle.

In late 2009 I also bought a wee samsung nc10 netbook... in retrospect I should probably have got a full laptop, the netbook's niche has been rightfully eaten by pad computers. It has a 1.5 ghz processor, equivelant to my old AMD desktop.

I also have a samsung galaxy s smartphone, but that scarcely counts.

What about the rest of you?

My first PC was an HP whose specs I don't remember. Bought it in '98. Then in 2004 I replaced it with an Apple G5, which is what I'm still using. I also have an Apple Powerbook laptop of around 2006 vintage.

I am working myself up to buying a new iMac - just waiting on them to be available with the Retina display. I may also buy a new laptop at the same time. Haven't made up my mind on that yet, but it will also be an Apple product.

Not sure if I'll remember them all:

TI99
Commodore 64
Commodore 128
Indie PC clone (486 processor)
two or three Dell desktops
five or six laptops (various manufacturer)
three netbooks

I hardly ever use a computer these days -- almost everything I wish to do is just fine and more convenient on a tablet.

Five.

These...

...and I gave up on laptops, and am on a Dell Inspiron.

at least 5 desktops and 3 laptops, maybe more.

Hmmm. Let's see...if we're just talking about laptops and desktops...

Commodore 64
Amiga 1000
? PC-AT compatible 80286
? PC-AT compatible 80486
? PC Pentium Pro desktop (still have, but not operating)
Dell Laptop (Pentium?) (still have, but not operating)
HP Laptop (Pentium II?) (scrapped[?], cracked screen)
? PC Pentium III desktop*
Lenovo Pentium III laptop*

*=still running

I *think* these are all of the ones I've owned. Some of them I haven't thought about in SOOOOO many years, I've forgotten their specs. There may have been another desktop in there somewhere, too.

Me personally? 5 since 1998.

Let's see I got my first one in 1998 when I was 16. It was 233mhz Pentium 2 with 4GB and some RAM. HP tower. I upgraded the box frequently until it was unstable - added DVD-ROM, new motherboard, etc.

During that time I also bought a shell of a laptop and installed Win2000 on it. No idea where that is.

In 2005 I got my grandpa's old Dell (better than my unstable 1998 box). It lasted a few months before it died.

At that exact time I bought a laptop (Compaq) (2ghz only 80gb) for lawschool which is still in my closet. It works and is fully loaded. I should really strip the software down on that and reinstall.

Just last year I phased out the laptop and bought a 3ghz box with a 1.5TB drive. Also an HP.

About three or four I think since my first in 1999.

Wait - does my computerized Leah Remini sex robot count? If so, I've burned through about a baker's dozen or so.

1998 Apple PowerBook G3
2005 Dell XPS Generation 5
2008 Mac Mini
2009 HP Pavilion a6700y
2011 Mac Mini

If I count handheld devices (and considering that the first computer I ever used (as opposed to owned) was an Apple ][, I don't see why we shouldn't) then there's also the following:

2005 HP iPAQ -- the one that looked like this:

2009 Microsoft Zune HD
2011 Apple iPhone 4

What I had access to growing up (my parents' rigs):
Commodore 64
Packard Bell 486/25 SX
Dell Pentium I 133
Toshiba Pentium I 166
eMachines Celeron 166
PowerMac 9500/200

My own boxes:
Pentium I 200 with Win 95, upped to 98SE, salvaged from school my senior year. Played the shit out of Diablo II on this (way underspecced too!)
Dell Pentium II with XP laptop from my girlfriend at the time, brought it back to life and watched the display go to shit
An ASUS AMD rig I built, I forget what processor it was. Win 2K Pro. It died, I swapped it out with an AMD Phenom II board. The CPU's dead, just needs to be replaced.
HP Pavilion DS 9000 from 2007, Vista. This turned to be a nuisance purchase: 64 bit system, 32 bit OS. Upgrading not supported by HP Still use this now, it's been surprisingly resilient for the shit that's happened to it (still mildly dislike Vista).
Acquired my sister's generic Celeron (PII equiv) box, mostly for when my next box decides to shit itself...
A P4 box put together from parts from FreeGeek, Portland's tech recycling center. It shits itself more than a toddler with the runs (including an Nvidia 6200 that blew up!)

- First one was my dad's old laptop (a HP, maybe?), around 1998/1999
- Second one was a Dell desktop, around 2003/2004
- Third one was a Dell laptop, 2006
- Fourth one was a Lenovo laptop (T61p), 2008

Since 2009 I've also had three rounds of company-sponsored Lenovo laptops (a T61, one I don't remember and now an X201 (on the third model of this one actually, but that doesn't really count).

I guess it's about time to upgrade...

I'm on my fifth personal computer. Six if you count my iPad.

I'm on my seventh smart phone.

Can't possibly remember! But the first was an Amiga 500, and the second was an Amiga 2000. There are still things that baby did that I can't do on a current PC.

Hmmm...

I got one from my uncle when I was sixteen--maybe had 256 MB of RAM and 20 GB storage that pretty much ran out within a year.

Then I got a compaq in '04 to replace that one--120 GB space, and 512 MB RAM, and was slow as fuck.

I bought an HP mini tower in '07 with 400 GB space and 4GB RAM, and that one I got maybe a year's worth of use before it just stopped turning on.

Then I got a netbook from Toshiba when I got stationed here, followed by a Sony full laptop last year, and both have been the best computers I've ever bought. I even put Ubuntu on the netbook.

No.

Let's see if I can remember all of them.

Commodore 64 (my first computer at the age of 6)
Amiga (I forget the specs)
386
486
Sony Vaio Pentium 4
my custom rig with a quad

Hmm...

Commodore 64
1530 Datasette Drive
1541 Floppy Disk Drive

Zenith Datasystems 286
12 Mhz Processor
256KB Video Card
1 MB RAM
20 MB HDD

Laser 386
33 Mhz Processor
1 MB Video Card
6 MB RAM
300 MB HDD

Compaq Presario
350 Mhz AMD K6-2 Processor
4 MB Video Card
16 MB RAM
20 GB HDD

HP Pavilion 6742
533 Mhz Intel Celeron Processor (w/MMX)
8 MB Video Card
64 MB RAM
40 GB HDD

Custom Built System
1.6 GHZ AMD Athlon XP 2800+ Processor
128 MB Video Card
1 GB RAM
160 GB HDD

iMac (17" model)
1.8 Ghz Intel Dual Processors
128 MB Video Card
1 GB RAM
160 GB HDD

Current:

HP Pavilion a6803w
2.66 GHz AMD Athlon X2 Processor
1 GB ATi Radeon 4670 Video Card
3 GB RAM
500 GB HDD

I custom-built a couple of my own from parts too, IIRC. I went back to buying them whole from stores.

Once the money cost and time started outweighing the ability to just walk in and buy on the spot, I did too. Hell, the last system I bought would have cost $100 more, at the time, if I would have built it myself, and that's with discounts.

Ooh, which reminds me that I forgot two:

HP Kayak XA
Pentium II - 233 Mhz
4 MB Video Card
32 MB RAM
20 GB HDD

Custom Built PC
800 Mhz AMD Duron
32 MB Video Card
256 MB RAM
40 GB HDD

I've been custom building PC's since 2004, and I've built a new one almost every year since, so...I can't remember at this point.

How many computers so far? Well, let's tally them up...

-Commodore 64, cassette drive, 9 inch TV for monitor
-IBM PC/XT (1981); 8088 processor, 4.77mHz, 640 K RAM, 20 megabyte hard drive, MS-DOS 2.1 (gave away)
-IBM PC-AT (1989); 80286 processor, 12 mHz, 2 MB RAM, 40 MB hard drive, MS-DOS 5.0 (gave away)
-IBM ThinkPad (1993); 80486 processor, 25 mHz, 4 MB RAM, 250 MB hard drive, Windows 3.1, 9,6 KB modem (stolen 1995, never seen again)
-Compaq Deskpro (1996); Pentium 120 mHz processor, 32 MB RAM, 1.8 GB hard drive, Windows 95, 28.8 K modem (still have it, it still works, now a backup)
-Dell Latitude C series (2004), Centrino 1 gHz processor,1 gig RAM, 18 GB hard drive, Windows XP, 56 K modem (damaged in fall, retired)
-Dell Latitude E6410 (2010), Core Duo 2.2 gHz processor, 2.5 GB RAM, 75 GB hard drive, Windows Vista, broadband 10 MBS cable modem (current main machine)

What's next? Well, we'll see what happens if this one can no longer do what it's being asked, but it'll be a while before it hits that stage...

some crappy laptop in '95
486 till about 97
Celeron 400 that lasted about 4 years
a couple of random p3s and 4s.
Got the box this is in about 5 years ago with a duocore 2.6G, like Dan, slowly have swapped out just about everything save the dvd.

TI99 (although that was really my dads)
Acorn Electron (my first computer)
P233MMX with 32mb of ram and a 3.2gb harddrive
P4 3ghz with 512mb of ram and a 160gb harddrive
Other the past few years that one has been gradually upgraded to this:
2.6ghz Core 2 Duo, 2gb of ram (well 4gb physically, but still on XP so can't use it all)

Recently I've got an iPad, but I wouldn't count that even though it technically overpowers most of the list.

Come to think of it, this is only my fourth.

All very basic, simply because I never really needed much more and I've always had to make due with what I could get.

Computer 1:


Computer 2:


And my next two were basic laptops 2008 and 2010. My current one is a Toshiba.

WTF? computer? I had GI Joe with the Kung-Fu grip.

Commodore 128
IBM with two 5 1/4 drives and no hard drive (but it had a 1200 baud modem!)
A couple of computers that had about 20 Mb hard drives
A couple of computers that had about 300-400 Mb hard drives
A couple of laptops
now I have a Dell Inspiron and a Kindle Fire

Do you like your Kindle Fire, Chuck? I have a Kindle 4 (got it for Christmas), and love it to death. Eventually, I want to move up and get a multi-function reader, and would like to stay in the Kindle family.