When did you get Internet/Web access?

[OnePimpTiger]

Also funny is that first family computer had a whopping 212 MB on the hard drive! 212 MB! You can't even run a single program nowadays with that!

The sad thing is my home comp only has 500 MB RAM and a 12 GB hard drive. At the time I got it, it was about as fast and big as you could go (I think 550 MB was the fastest general consumer comp at the time) and it cost around $2,400. Ten years later, I'm still plugging away on it...we are looking at a laptop though. We'll probably be able to get one that's at least 4 times better on everything for about 1/4 of the price. My how things change in a decade...

[molly1984]

Molly - Were you possibly on rec.collecting.sport.basketball? My first trades were made through that group. :)

There's no way I'd be able to remember now where I visited, but I do remember buying cards and supplies on AOL boards and newsgroups :)

[WilyWestbrook0]

The sad thing is my home comp only has 500 MB RAM and a 12 GB hard drive. At the time I got it, it was about as fast and big as you could go (I think 550 MB was the fastest general consumer comp at the time) and it cost around $2,400. Ten years later, I'm still plugging away on it...we are looking at a laptop though. We'll probably be able to get one that's at least 4 times better on everything for about 1/4 of the price. My how things change in a decade...

Yeah, computer costs in the late '90s were still rather high. $2400 is about what my family paid to get our first one, and that was in late 1995. We replaced that one in 1998, and replaced the '98 one in 2003. Now we have a 2008 upgrade to the '03 one, but are still using the same monitor. Seems to be changing every five years, but this latest one we got is very customizable and has been predicted to last well into the 2010s. Currently, it has 149 GB of hard drive and 4 GB of memory. The processor is AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core, and it can be updated to quad core.

[snowkat]

1992

[WilyWestbrook0]

^ Whoa, I'd say you are likely the earliest here. I never even used a computer until 1994, when I was in fourth grade.

[Greenlantern]

The sad thing is my home comp only has 500 MB RAM and a 12 GB hard drive. At the time I got it, it was about as fast and big as you could go (I think 550 MB was the fastest general consumer comp at the time) and it cost around $2,400. Ten years later, I'm still plugging away on it...we are looking at a laptop though. We'll probably be able to get one that's at least 4 times better on everything for about 1/4 of the price. My how things change in a decade...

There was a time when personal computers had no hard drive (i.e., floppy disk and tape players). It is indeed amazing how far technology has come in the last 25 years.

[snowkat]

^ Whoa, I'd say you are likely the earliest here. I never even used a computer until 1994, when I was in fourth grade.

Being old makes that happen I guess...you in second grade...me in second year of college.

[WilyWestbrook0]

Not necessarily. My mom is 67 and my dad is 54, but that 1995 computer we got was their first as well.