Poll: First version of Windows?

[matai]

Poll: Which version of Windows did you first learned to use?

[matai]

I first learned to use DOS, then there was a graphic program in DOS called Workstation to make things easier, but 1st Windows version was 3.11

Couple months later when Windows 95 came out, I upgraded using all of these, lol:

[zzontar]

http://www.123rf.com/photo_19840174_aba ... round.html

[Bsuds]

My first OS was on 5 1/4" disks.

[Dizzy1]

Let's see, I had a Vic20, C64, a couple of DOS machines, Window's 3.1, Window's 95, Mac, Window's 98, Window's XP, Window's Vista, Window's 7 and now a Mac. So 3.1 for me.

[mexi cali]

IBM PC Junior so DOS for me.

[Symbonite]

1994 fall my first computer 15 years old i was.

Started on a 486DX 33 turbo to 66 with 2x Creative CDROM Soundblaster 16 16MB EDO RAM I forget the HDD space but I had a Diamond Speedstar Graphics accelerator, aslo A USR 14400 Buad Modem (then upgraded to a 28.8)

Learned on Dos 6.22 and Windows 3.11

First game played....Wolfinstien/Secret of monkey Island/Secret Weopon of the Luftwaffe. (awesome flight sim)

But mostly used the computer to play on the Bulletin Board Systems BBS (pre internet) Was probably the best time of computers between 94-99ish 2000.

Got onto the internet around 97 with dialup with sympatico and then cable 99 with shaw.

anyways...

edit to add

Frist use of a computer was a Tandy 1000 from Radio Shack

[Woodenhead]

Vic20

haha those things - that was my first computer experience

READY
10 PRINT "Hello Dizzy1!"
20 GOTO 10
RUN

[hobbyguy]

Here's a bit of fun for those who think computers are expensive:

I found an old invoice while cleaning out junk:

1999 Compaq Presario (remember Compaq??) PIII 450, total paid, tax in: $2,393.99

Whiz bang features? A 14" RGB CRT monitor. A 3-1/4" floppy drive. A ZIP drive (remember them?? 100 mb of storage! and about the size of a 500GB portable HD). A CD ROM! TWO, count 'em TWO USB ports, and a firewire port. Windows 98.

The scary part? It still works. But then so does my old IBM ThinkPad...

[Dizzy1]

^^ I upgraded my 386x's RAM from 1 MB to 3MB back in the day and paid $250 for a 2MB RAM chip. A week later I bought a SoundBlaster sound card which came with 2 small speakers for $650. Ah, those were the days.

[Bsuds]

20meg hard drive cost me $200.

[Dizzy1]

Here's a stroll down memory lane ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqkkByP8RDM

... makes you wonder if we'll be all nostalgic like in 20-25 years about Windows 8 LOL!

[36Drew]

Wow I feel old. Osborne 1, CP/M.

[Sonny Taylor]

Wow I feel old. Osborne 1, CP/M.

Then I should feel like a fossil.

If it's cool to stray back in history further than Windows on this thread, then here's my first computer... The "IBM 1130 Computing System".



It was 1970, I was in grade 9 (14 years old) and our school was one of only three schools in Toronto that actually had a computer on site.

When I discovered this beast in the school, it changed my career interest immediately from electronics in general to computer software. I eventually made a fairly serious career out of that interest (large mainframe operating systems support for Rogers Cablesystems, banks and insurance companies) even though I dropped out of school halfway through grade 11 because I knew the school couldn't teach me what I wanted to know about computers.

The console was essentially a computer controlled IBM selectric ("typeball") typewriter mechanism (no screen display). Our system had big 16K of core memory ("RAM" in todays terms) yeah... hand wired magnetic cores; not memory chips. Those 16 flip switches you see in front of the console gave you the capability to directly enter programs to memory in binary machine language if you so desired. Using that capability was unusual though; we sometimes did it as a hobby. Of course, computer graphics were almost unheard of then, never mind other multimedia. But what you could squeeze out of 16k of memory and a 1 meg hard drive was still impressive, especially if you programmed in (extremely efficient, but difficult) Assembly Language.

The system featured a 1 megabyte removable and plastic enclosed hard disk as seen below...



We thought our IBM 2501 punched card reader was really fast. It could read 600 cards per minute (10 cards per second):



Our printer was a mechanical marvel... an impact printer that did a grand 66 lines per minute:




At the time we thought that the prediction that within our living history there would be a computer in every home was a serious joke. We couldn't imagine an environmentally controlled computer room at home with such space and power requirements.

Little did we know at the time where technology would eventually lead us!

These days, computers are not necessarily my primary career focus, but the long time hobby hasn't lost appeal to me. There's also money to be made on the side cleaning up windows machines of Malware and viruses and I have a good sized word of mouth clientele.

[GordonH]

I'm one of those old-timers first computer I use needed these here:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... 39.agr.jpg