Owning more than one computer at a time

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I had to share a computer with my grandfather, and he used it 8 hours a day so I barely got time on it, until I was almost 15. And I only got a computer at 15 because we got robbed and they took all the valuables I had amassed in my 14.5 years on Earth and instead of replacing it all I said I wanted a desktop, so I got a desktop.

'Twas a Pentium II 300Mhz with a 3DFX VooDoo Banshee and 64MB of RAM. I only got a 2.1GB HDD with it to save some budget but I upgraded to a 6.4GB a while later.

I remember it fondly.

I'm just saying- I was eternally grateful to my family for letting me get that computer. Had I not had to live without a computer for so long beforehand, I don't think I would have appreciated it as much. My friend's son has had an iPad since he was 2 years old, and he just recently (at age 4) gave him a full desktop with a 2500K, 8GB of DDR3, and a GTX560Ti. He gives him everything he could ever want because he is on the ASD spectrum at an as yet undetermined location, but I think he's spoiling his son.

Well, I don't think it's possible to 'spoil' a child. I think it's possible to not help them learn the value of things or how to appreciate them and I also think it's possible to not teach a child to be respectful and grateful, but I don't think having a PC necessarily equates to a 'spoiled child'.

There's a big difference between teaching kids how to work and teaching them how to appreciate the value of money and things. I tend to think people call children who haven't been taught self discipline and self control 'spoiled', but that's never really a child's fault so I hate the term 'spoiled child'. Plus I'm sure a lot of people would call autistics 'spoiled children' when they saw them having meltdowns and didn't understand the issues, so I take care not to label other people's kids with derogatory terms.

I get your point, though, I think. It is good to learn how to value 'things' and that things are not available at your beckon call. We are a pretty poor family at our house but PCs are one of the things we value so we each have one. Trust that we go without a number of other things, so there's no need for me to teach my child a lesson about how he has to work out of being in poverty lest he be 'spoiled'.

I've had my own computer ever since I was 5 years old. This was back around 1998/1999. It was only my parent's old Pentium 133MHz box, but it was still my own machine. Neither my parents nor I have ever been "rich" either.

Did you learn a lot because of it? I think having a computer that allows you to access the world is a phenomenal thing. My son has had his own since he was about five, too. His was an old model something. He always gets my hand me down unless he saves or uses gift money for something. He just bought himself a super flash HD monitor with birthday money. Beats the expletive out of my monitor, but he uses his PC for things that are better appreciated in HD. I use mine for things like this and studying, so my graphics can be second rate.

ed: There will come a day in the not so distant future where people will think it's hilarious we ever questioned everyone having their own access points.

My family's definition of spoiled has always been a child who gets everything they want, and doesn't appreciate the value of money as a result. Due to this, said person becomes lazy under the false impression that mom and dad will provide everything the person's heart desires forever and ever and then the parents pass away and the person becomes homeless. And then they die.

That's how it was explained to me when I wanted more toys than I was allowed to have when I was little.

Well, I remember when I was around that age, I spent a lot of time messing with the settings on my parents' computer, because my machine had Windows 95, and theirs had 98, so there was more stuff to play around with. This naturally drove them nuts. Eventually I got that machine from them about a year later when they upgraded to a Pentium III, and I got the P3 a little while later when they upgraded to an Athlon XP, which ironically still ran 98 like their last two machines. I definitely learned a lot for being at such a young age, though a lot of it also came from reading computer and gaming magazines, and watching TechTV.

Thanks for sharing your story. I didn't even know there was such a thing as TechTV. I will look it up. I do the same thing with my son, pass on my old machines. He's started to learn how to troubleshoot and do his own tech support at 12, probably because he doesn't like asking mummy to fix it at his age which is super fine by me.

TechTV was a cable channel that I used to be a fan of, but some time around 2003/2004, it got bought out by G4, and they fired most of the original show hosts. Some of the old TechTV series continued on here in Canada longer than they did in the US, but it wasn't long before the channel became a shadow of its former self.

For anybody interested in TechTV type things, there are infinity million youtube channels on the subject. If you're interested in classic computers, every episode of "The Computer Chronicles" with Stuart Cheiffet is on Youtube. Hundreds of them. You can watch him talk about new computer parts and software all the way from the 80s through to about 2000.

"How much faster is the new 486 than a comparable 386?" and other fun stuff like that await you. They're all 480P too since they're ripped from old NTSC signals so you don't need a fast connection to watch them.

Cool, will check these out.

I <3 The Computer Chronicles. Such a fascinating show.

It was good but it wasn't aimed at enthusiasts. More like "enlightened users". They never spent enough time on any specific topic. It was all sort of just scratch the surface, then move on. They tried to cram too much information into each show. Stuart is sort of a jerk too, the way he cuts people off and rushes them.

I certainly wouldn't appreciate being brought on a tech show only to have 45 seconds to totally cover my product.

Not counting smartphones and tablets, I have several working PCs, including my primary home machine, another personal machine that lives in the office for the start-up I'm working with, as well as another work machine that I do not own. I also have three laptops, two personal ones (one new, the other in retirement) and a work one.

I've been exposed to computers from a fairly young age. I think I was about 4 when my dad brought home his work Macintosh (an original all-in-one model with the tiny B&W screen). He also had an old Acorn that would hook up to the TV. Much of my childhood was spent with an Amstrad PC1512 running DOS. I later got to play with OS/2 (it was ahead of its time), as well as various versions of Windows 3.x, Windows 9x, etc.