What was your first day with your first computer like?

Last night I was thinking about when I got my very first computer.

It was back in March, 2000. I had only a brief experience with a computer with a job I once had and that involved making up invoices in a shipping department. It wasn't connected to the internet and the only thing I could do on it was enter billing information for the invoices.

When I got my first computer I had no idea what the internet "looked like" and it was just a word to me.

The first thing I did after my computer was set up was connect via dial up to the internet and find some solitaire card games on the internet.

I'll never forget that! I searched for "games" and found one that had a pyramid solitaire game and I went to play it. I was playing my second game when suddenly I was warped away from the game and my screen went totally black!

I had no clue what was going on and I didn't know how to get back my card game. As the page slowly opened it was revealing pornography pictures. There was no X in the upper right corner and I didn't know about "CTRL ALT DEL" back then either.

Then I noticed something at the top of the screen in very very small font that was hardly noticeable saying "click here to close". So I clicked there and the screen went black again and once again started to open up very slowly from the top down. I tried a few times but it always went back to that page.

I was totally freaked that I pressed the "Off" button on my computer and unplugged it from the telephone jack and wall outlet!!! I didn't turn it back on again for 3 days because I thought that when I did that page would still be there, LMAO

What was your first day with your very first computer like?
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"Dad? Should it be smoking like that?" (Me, age 11)

Power strips/surge protectors are your friends

[evil_genius_180]

I got it. Unpacked it. Played about 3 or 4 games of solitaire and then went to work. Not as enticing as your story, but it was a bitch to work a 10-hour shift, all the time thinking about that brand new PC waiting for me at home.

As for figuring stuff out, that was a few months after I graduated from high school in '98, around the time stuff was going on sale for Christmas, and I'd had computer classes in school, so I knew my way around Windows, but I knew nothing about the internet. Now, my first time on the internet was many months later and is a whole other story....

The first thing I said when I got my first computer was "That is a computer?" It was a Z80 with 4k of ram :P not even a apple ][e like the schools had

[Kai]

first thing I Said (back in 1984)

"Dad, can I have a go?"
(I did'nt get MY Spectrum 48k until the next day when he decided to get his own)

My first machine was a C=64 that I got back in 85.
The first thing I did was used it and my Westridge 300baud automodem to hack into every local BBS in my area that was running the 'Megasoft' BBS program.
It was written in BASIC and unless the SysOp took the time to read through the program, find the backdoor password and change it - it was real easy to just walk right in with SysOp level access.

*this is the part where I now try to look all innocent and stuff*

[startrekfan001]

my first was when i was 12, a pentium 120 mhz laptop with 32 megs of ram and 2 gigs of HD. The first thing i did was repair all this broken stuff on it. (i got it from my dad, he had been using it for 5 years, and now i could play with it.) I went trough a horrible period of fixing wires, buying new transistors, replacing RAM and HD, and finnally fixing the sound by getting the right drivers. (then i discovered it wasnt the drivers but the speakers, so i struggled to get the speakers work good for a while too). When my dad saw me using it, when it was repaired, he said HOW DID YOU DO THAT!! IT NEVER GAVE SUCH GOOD SOUND OR IMAGE!! i later on discovered that i hadnt been repairing, but upgrading the thing since it was build to work as crappy as i first got it. Later i used it as a multimedia machine, and now i made a kid from some friends of my parents happy with it. (they like the spongebob games it has )

The first time I used a computer was some mainframe at the University around 1976. We started with punch cards, then they got DECwriters (which were crude contraptions with a keyboard and a printer instead of a monitor).

My first computer was an Atari 400 that cost an outrageous $500. I soon upgraded it with a real keyboard, instead of the worthless membrane thing. This was around 1980.

I started exploring the internet with an ancient IBM PC that didn't even run Windows. No web browser, just email and usenet newsgroups. Text only, no graphics.

I remember when my wife finally "got" the point behind the internet. I had taught her how to use usenet with a step-by-step recipe. She makes quilts and knows a bit about fabrics. Well, this usenet post appears on alt.crafts.quilting. Somebody in Texas was looking for fabric with an Olde Worlde map print. As it turns out, my wife knew where to find such a fabric.

She posts the information, and not one minute later is another post from the person thanking her profusely.

I saw the lightbulb appear above her head. She had helped a fellow quilter that she had never met who lived a thousand miles away. And she could get help with her questions as well. Not to mention the fact that there were no fellow quilters who lived nearby, the internet suddenly plugged her into an online community.

She was hooked...

A friend of mine had an Atari 400 back in the day (14k I think it was) and we had a blast with that machine.
I was hooked the first time I used it.

I also had a Timex Sinclair (2k) that we used to dink around with.

Originally Posted by nyrath

I remember when my wife finally "got" the point behind the internet. I had taught her how to use usenet with a step-by-step recipe. She makes quilts and knows a bit about fabrics. Well, this usenet post appears on alt.crafts.quilting. Somebody in Texas was looking for fabric with an Olde Worlde map print. As it turns out, my wife knew where to find such a fabric.

She posts the information, and not one minute later is another post from the person thanking her profusely.

I saw the lightbulb appear above her head. She had helped a fellow quilter that she had never met who lived a thousand miles away. And she could get help with her questions as well. Not to mention the fact that there were no fellow quilters who lived nearby, the internet suddenly plugged her into an online community.

She was hooked...

haha. I can relate. I didn't know anything about computers when I got mine 6 years ago and I had dial up. I would get stuck on something and then disconnect, call a friend and try and explain what I needed help with, she would ask me questions and of course I didn't know any terminology so I was trying to describe what stuff looked like and say "the thingy" etc. Then I'd connect and try what she suggested, only to disconnect and call her back and tell her it didn't work etc. LOL Finally I found my way into an MSN chat room. I had remembered hearing about "chat rooms" and I remember seeing something about "Chat" when I was at my hotmail mail box, so I clicked that and found myself in "chat rooms" and discovered that I could ask my questions there and get help while online. It was so amazing to me.

Also back there there were free PC to phone programs like dialpad and a few others that made getting computer help so much easier.

I did the chat room thing for a few months, but found out through experience that quite a few people who frequent those "room" are quite weird, LOL and many are complete liars who reinvent themselves into someone they wish they really were It was way strange anyway.

[scaramanga]

I can't remember ... :o

I got my first computer on Christmas day back in, oh, 84 or 85...can't remember which exactly. I do remember, however, that it was an Atari and that our entire day was filled with syntax error, syntax error, syntax error. No matter what we tried to do that's all we got. Of course, looking back on it now, had the family let me play with it I probably could've gotten it to work, but I was only 5 or 6 at the time.

With all the frustration my parents took the damn thing back and came home with a shiny new Commodore 128 which I used for the next 10 years until I got my first PC, running Windows 3.11 and Packard Hell's own desktop shell thing, in the summer of 94. Then 10 years after that, in August of 04, I got my first Mac, running OS X 10.3.4.

Lets see. What I really see a s MY first computer is when I got my G5 tower. It was mine, no one elses. Anyway, I got it home around 8pm in mid december. Set it up, installs and all, within about 90 min. Now my computer room is on a side wall facing the neighbors house, with curtans in the window, so not much light gets in there.

I started on a video editing project then moved to Cinema 4D. I went from 9:30 pm to 11 am without noticing the passage of time. If it werent for my co director showing up for a meeting, I would have gone till that night.