Sharing my reply from yet another post What was your first exposure to the PC? (Keep in mind in this case PC referring to the beige box running Intel compatible CPU/Dos or Windows lol) - Well, being into tech in all forms of course I saw the evolution and growing dominance of the Beige Boxes, the original Dos Boxes never did anything for me and I just wasnt enough of a geek to get into it, I was one with more of a creative interest so I wasnt interested in anything outside of game consoles until the Amiga hit, and by hit I mean I discovered it in import magazines at my local Bookstore and was awed by what could be done with video, animation and artwork so everything else just seemed so pale in comparison. You must keep in mind at my school there were no atari computers either, I would go to a friends house for lunch and we might sneak some time on his big brothers Ti99 and Vic20. My own personal first machine was a C64 followed by Amiga and those were enough for me. The same friend whos house I would go for lunch later moved on his own and he was right into the beige box P.C.s and he certainly seemed to love it, but he was always more of a technical person, he loved DOS and later Windows, but I remember every-time he added something, new sound card, graphic card, or even loading the latest PC game having to buy more memory or some other upgrade and then dealing with configurations, IRQ conflicts etc, he sure seemed to get frustrated at the whole thing. Once running I was impressed with all the simulations for flight, submarine, tanks (my friend was a hard core military fanatic) but it just seemed so much work I would come home, pop in Lemmings, or Stuntcar Racer floppy and it would just boot right up no fuss, no configuring, full color, stereo sound and awesome animation. And so it was I stuck with Amiga / Workbench as ling as I could. I really tried to avoid the PC side of things, but I always kept up with it through articles, visiting friends and family I STILL seemed to know more then those that actually owned the machines (I know many here can relate to being the computer guy and tech support in the family) but at some point due to demands of work, requirements of school and the fact of commodore dying off (It already had a piss poor presence in Canada) reluctantly decided it was time to join what seemed to be the rest of the world. I seriously considered going APPLE / MAC this was I believe during the era of THINK DIFFERENT and candy colored iMACS etc, I was VERY tempted to go that route but two things weighed heavily against it. 1. COST, although cost of entry was comparable after looking into all the accessories and extras I would eventually want and crunching numbers I could not justify it. 2. Support. Dont get me wrong, clearly by this time APPLE computers had a large fanbase, support etc, but having come from AMIGA where I could never fine a damn thing hardware or software wise locally and knew nobody else who had the platform I did not want to repeat this with APPLE. I thought it was awesome but I knew NOBODY else into it, it seemed the entire world was on windows and if I ever had an computer problem I could practically find someone knowledgeable with the PC platform literally by turning around and looking over my shoulder lol. So going PC was a choice of finances, support and being compatible with others, after years of already being on what I considered a superior but unknown, poorly supported and little respected platform it was not like I could not handle it I just was tired of it and so chose to be one of the majority for sanitys sake. This all brought me to my first USED cheap generic beige box with a minimal specification that came with Win95, I recall get it up to spec well enough to just run Win98 and soon after Win98 Second Edition, then after getting together with my wife who had not a great machine but better than mine I sold what I had, upgraded hers and it was on to WinXP which I enjoyed for a long time. Today the Desktop runs Win764bit (a machine I built) and the old laptop runs Win7 32bit. Throughout this history I was intrigued by certain PC models like the IBM PC Jr, and many of the early attempts at wiz bang all in one multi-media PCs by the likes of companies like Gateway lol. But I just never quite bit on those.
Posted on: Thu, 16 Jan 2014 04:13:29 +0000
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