When did you get your first phone? First computer? What was it?

Commodore 64, with the tape reader, hooked to a black&white CRT

Seems I'm the eldest one here for now

First computer in about '99, which I'd "built" (I was 8, so I mostly just watched while my dad's friend built it and occasionally let me plug some wires in)

First phone, Nokia 3310 in 2003, with a Simpsons case, I think I've got it in a box somewhere...

I got my first phone in 1998. It was a nokia 8110, aka the 'banana phone'.

I got my first computer in 1989. It was a Commodore VIC-20. I still have it. 5kB of RAM should be enough for everyone.

In December of 1994, in Greece, finally my parents agreed to get me a computer, as I was finishing college (was studying to be a computer programmer). I come from a very poor family, so it took some convincing. I ordered a modest 486 DX-40 Mhz, with 4 MB of RAM (10 months later it had to be updated to 8 MB in order to run Win95), 4x CD-ROM, 1.44 floppy drive, and a 420 MB Conner HDD. It had a Cirrus Logic graphics card (which I later upgraded to an S3), and a plain soundblaster sound card. The monitor was an 800x600 14" CRT monitor, and I think I also got a joystick with it too. I ran Win3.1 originally, and DOS. I was programming mainly in Turbo Pascal, and dBase III.

The only "computer" we had at home before that, was an Atari 2600, that I bought my brother as a gift, in a yard sale in 1991, Germany. Already extremely outdated by that time, but that was the only one I could afford (I was in Germany for 8 months in early 1990s, before I went to college back in Greece, working menial jobs: janitor, kitchen help).

I installed a bunch of shareware games found on magazines when I got the 486, so I got viruses a couple of times too because of that (Greek PC magazines at the time weren't as careful as they should have been). I had no access to the internet or BBS, you see. It had to be through magazines, especially since almost no one else in my small town had a computer at the time to share software with.

That's the computer I had when I moved to the UK in late 1996, to go work as a programmer there. I got paid well there, so I upgraded a few times, particularly the graphics card (at one point I had a voodoo SLI).

When I got married and left for the US in 2001, I had a dual Celeron at 333 Mhz, 128 MB RAM, and an nVidia TNT2 Ultra.

I got a cellphone for the first time in 2003 I think, some Nokia ones I think. I was writing tech reviews online, so companies were sending me loaners to review. However, my phone usage was spotty, since I was on a pay-as-you-go (with limited, or no data plan) for about 10 years. It took the 2010s for me to get a family plan, with enough data. I did get my hands on the first iphone though, and the first android too (my husband was part of the original android team at the time, at Google). These days, I'm back in Greece as of the beginning of this year, and I run Murena e/OS, the de-googled version of Android that is privacy-focused (based on LineageOS).

My first computer was a Commodore 128. Of course it mainly ran in C64 mode for all the games.

I used an old TV as the monitor. I secretly bought an antenna cable so that I could watch TV. Through some in-house cabling stuff I could also see the BMX videos my older brother was watching. Good times.

1995

• Pentium 75 MHz
• 8 MB RAM
• 700 MB HDD
• CD-ROM drive

Phone: it looked like https://www.sparkshire.co.uk/cdn/shop/products/CREAM8746TELEPHONE1512x.png?v=1627985748

Computer: ZX spectrum

My first phone was some badass Nokia from 1998. My first comp was in 1993. DX33 with a 1MB Genoa GPU, 8MB RAM, 250MB HDD, and a 2400 baud modem. That sumremoved was $3,000 back then.

Pretty sure it was a Nokia 3110 in the late 90’s.

For first PC it would have been around 1995. Dial up baby.

Gaming console would have been the Sega Master System. But I do remember other things before this but they were my uncles. Maybe a commador

I remeber my 1st computer was a 133 Mhz with a 36k dial-up, I had a pager before I had a phone, but im sure the phone was Nokia and had Snake 🐍

Edit: pc was around 94? 95? Tbf we had a Tandy 1000 as a family computer in late 80s

My first computer was a ZX81 - in 1982 - which, with my brother, I built from a kit and was astonished when it actually worked. We eventually added the 16k ram pack too: how could anyone possibly use all that?!

First phone. I think it was a Nokia 5110 or similar in 2000.

TRS 80 sans disk drive. My school library and local library had BASIC programs in the books. I'm now a SR Software Engineer. Wild. My first phone couldn't even text... Whatever it was.

Commodore 64

Anyone over 40 who doesn't say Nokia or Motorola is either lying or should check themselves into memory rehab.

Phone, probably in 2012 or 2013: Sony Ericsson W200i.

Proper computer in 2020: (Laptop) eMachines e627. A very slow AMD Athlon 64 powered laptop. It broke after 2 months of use. It's what got me to Linux. I barely got any understanding of what OS is, less so a difference between Linux and Windows, but I needed one. I found the UI of Windows 10 too complicated, so I went with Linux Mint 20 MATE.
Of course, that is only after learning what "distribution" is.
My ass was trying to find "just Linux".

Thankfully, it already had Windows installed (used, unclean, untrusted, potentially unsafe to use) and I managed to dig out some DVD-RW which used to have some cartoon on it. Of course I had 0 flash drives.

For the reference, I am 18 now.

Third or fourth hand nokia, one of em indestructible ones. I was in school, so I didn't have much use for one. Kept using nokia until I got a blackberry, and then a samsung. Moved over to iphone but didn't like it much.

First tower computer in 1993. Acer (absolute piece of garbage)

First cell phone in 2009 (I think was the year) it was an LG . One of the slider phones where you slid part of the phone to expose the keyboard.

My first computer was our family’s 286 Wang pc. I used it mainly to play Sierra games. It’s how I learned a lot of my first English words.
I got my first cellphone, a Sony-Ericsson, around 2003 and only because my brother gave it to me. I was a staunch hater of cellphones but too Dutch to pass up on a free thing :)

First computer though a console Atari 2600 when I was 5

Proper computer Acorn electron at 7

Phone 6610 at 14

First computer, Tandy Coco 2 (TRS-80) in 1988 or 89.

First phone (other than a landline) was a Motorola bag phone around 1996(?)

Like age? Couldn't really afford that many luxuries growing up so my first real phone was at 17, some kind of kyocera, as for my first computer think I was 11. The computer was actually a laptop, a Sony VAIO, from a thrift store. The keyboard, trackpad, battery and speakers didn't work and the screen had damage so I got a hell of a deal on it. Didn't know how to fix it at the time, so I just used USB peripherals, connected it to my TV and threw on lubuntu, that beast lasted me for another 6 years until I went to college.

I'm going to claim the family PC as my first computer. It was a 486 running DOS and Windows 3.1. I got my first taste of Windows 95 when my dad bought my sister a new PC to take to college. I remember installing Jedi Knight on there then having to wait years for an upgrade to the family PC where I could load Windows XP and play newer games.

First phone was an old blue Nokia, possibly a 3310, looking at old pics. I called it a Blueberry to make fun of the flagships of the day. I got it at 16 when I got my license and was told in no uncertain terms that I was not to use it unless I was hopelessly lost or wrapped around a tree.

I have no idea what the specs of my first computer was, but I know that it was running Windows 98 and was one of those old beige boxes that looks terrible, but that was like the only color for computers back then for whatever the hell reason was that God awful beige tan shit. That would have been in about 2003 and my school was running computers with Windows XP at the time.

I got my first cell phone in 2006 or 2007 and it was a Sony Ericsson flip phone on AT&T and it was this black and white flip phone. At about that same time, I also got my very first laptop, and it was running Windows Vista, I think, and we still had dial-up, because nothing more modern had come to our little country home. So I had to use 19 KB/s dial-up until 2010.

I got my first smartphone in 2011 and it was an iPhone 3GS because it was either free or $99 on contract. I remember being in a 100,000 population city and listening to Pandora with edge cell data and having an entire monthly allotment of like a gigabyte or maybe two. I also remember the rollout of 3G because I started seeing that in the city of 100,000 people and only had 2G in my hometown and then finally one day saw 3G was beginning to roll out in my hometown.

My first phone was a Nokia 100 in 2008, my first computer I owned was my first laptop, a Lenovo Ideapad 100S (4GB RAM, 64GB Storage) in 2017. I'm currently rocking a phone (Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G) that has better specs (6GB RAM, 128GB Storage) than that old laptop which is still kinda crazy to me. I also think the processor is more powerful as well, but don't know the exact specs off the top of my head.

My first phone was the standard '70s Bell-style rotary

I remember I had a 386 with or without co-processor.Later upgraded to a luxury 486!Wow.That brings back a lot of memories.Floppy disks, text consoles. 🙂

My first own computer was a Pentium II with 300Mhz, 64MB Memory, an Elsa Gladiac Erazor graphics card and a 4GB HDD. I got it around the year 2000, it was a used computer from the company of my parents. Before I got this one I was allowed to play on the 286 and later the 486 which my parents had in their company's office. My first mobile was a Nokia 6210 and I got it around the year 2001.

Built a system with a speedy Pentium 100 (later upgraded to a K6). Late 90s. Windows 98SE.

First phone was a Motorola RAZR.

Phone? Probably an old flip phone. Motorola perhaps? I can’t remember. Computer was a Tandy TRS-80 I think, or something like that.

I got my first phone when I was 13-14 or so, a Nokia 3330, great phone, later I moved to an 8210, 5110, Sony Ericsson k700i, Sony Ericsson k800i (damn fantastic phone), Nokia 5800, Nokia E7 (pickpocked less than a year after buying it with my first pay check, brilliant phone) Nokia 300, Nokia E72 (Fantastic phone), iPhone 5s, iPhone SE, iPhone 6s, iPhone 12 mini.

My first computer ran Windows 3.11, no idea of the specs, I shared it with my sister, the first computer I can sort of remember the specs of was a machine with an AMD 233mhz cpu, windows 95/98, 32MB ram, 1.6 GB hdd and a Diamond sound card.

Phone: Nokia 5160 I think it was.

Computer: ZX-81

I had a Sony Vaio desktop around 2002 or 2003. I believe it had a Core 2 Duo and 256 MB RAM. I eventually doubled the ram to 512 MB and added a 64 MB graphics card to play FFXI in 2004.

Ironically my first cellphone was also a Sony. It was an Ericsson flip phone around 2008. I was working at RadioShack and got to watch the smartphone evolution in real time, so that was pretty neat.

I think I got my first cell phone in 2001 or 2002, it was a Kyocera 2135, or another similar model from Kyocera. My first PC is an Acer with a 75 MHz with 8 mb of RAM, came preinstalled with Windows 3.1. My family got it maybe 8 months before Windows 95 came out.

• Room phone: A clear 90's phone
• Cell Phone: Some sort of non-folding T9 phone, it wasn't a Nokia though
• Smartphone: Knockoff iPhone 6
• Computer: Pentium III desktop with 256 MB RAM, 30 GB HDD, Windows Me. It was also the family computer. Later upgraded to 1GB RAM and Windows 2000
• Computer (my own): 10.6" notebook with a 1 GHz Celeron, 512 MB RAM, 60 GB HDD, and Windows XP (later upgraded to 2GB RAM)

1978? We had a commodore pet. "Open 1,8,15". My father had some HP touchscreen thing.

Upgrade was the atari with the ms-basic cartridge and cassette storage. I coded up a database.

Then I had an Amiga 1000 with a real 2400 modem. And then later a beige box 486.

First cell was 1990. I owned a town car - ran airport service. Needed a phone for the execs to show off. Charged them $1/minute.

I remember us having an Atari computer along with some Compac computer running DOS in the late 80s. The computers I grew up with were models that we got for free from my dad's workplace whenever they upgraded. We ran Win 3.1 until about '98. Win 95 was prevalent in the house until the mid '00s. Due to my dad's job, we always had a computer of some sort in the house.

The computers in my elementary school's computer lab were Apple 2es - in the 90s.

I didn't get a cellphone until around 2004/2005, and then it was a hand-me-down from my older sister. The Nokia 5110 - the brick, complete with extendable antenna.

Gateway back in 1994. I was 5 idk the model

Nokia brick in 2002.

Lessee...

First phone was a red Samsung feature with a feature phone around 2009, 2010 or so.

First computer of my own was an old IBM thing. Don't remember the model, but it was just a simple black tower with a 16:10 monitor. 2 gigs RAM, 32gb hard drive, and a Pentium 4! It was too shit to render flashlights in HL2 Deathmatch but I played shit tons of that on it. Once it got a GPU and a 500 gig drive a while after, I clocked soooo many hours playing gmod and classic Doom on it as a kid.

First phone: Conair Transparent Trimline

First computer: Tandy 1000HX in 1990, but before that I used my grandpa’s Macintosh SE.

When I turned 13, I got my first computer, a laptop (a gaming computer, originally running Windows 10, ran Windows 11 for a very short time when it came out and it's been Linux ever since), although I'd had use of my family's desktop for a few years previously (10 year old very slow computer, running Windows). I was given a dumb phone at 11 (some Nokia), got my first smartphone at 14 (an iPhone), and the first smartphone I actually owned at 16 (a Motorola).

Apple ][e, it became “mine” in 90 after we moved. It’s still at my sister’s house, needs anew drive cable (we think). I bought a P2 350MHz a few years later so I could do something useful…those were the days…

First phone was (I think) a Razr, in 03. My dad was more than happy to buy me a phone so he wasn’t worried about me driving back and forth from college.

I'm not sure what the very first one was, but I think the one I used most as a kid was this one or something similar (family computer):

https://www.qvc.com/hp-7915-celeron-11ghz-pc-w-128mb%2C-40gb%2C-winxp-%26-monitor.product.E108100.html

I don't remember my first laptop but I got it in 2010ish around the end of school.

My first cell phone was from Cingulair in 2004 or 2005? A black flip phone. No idea of anything else about it, except that I ran up the texting bill and it had an internet button right on the keypad which I was constantly hitting on accident. That's probably how I developed anxiety now that I think about it.

My first smartphone was a Nokia Windows phone. Looks like Lumia is what it was called...maybe the 520? Also black. I got that around 10 years ago. I didn't even want it and I've always regretted it because that was when I really started getting attached to my phone. All these apps and stuff...yuck

1987: Amiga 500, and it had the extra 1MB RAM module to plug in the side.
1997: built my first PC, Pentium 150, also had a voodoo 2 graphics accelerator and a 2.1GB quantum fireball HDD.
1997: got my first cell phone, Alcatel one touch easy.
2003: first laptop, had a pentium 3 800?

We had a Vic20 then a Commodore 64 when I was a kid.

I think our first modem was 300baud and I went on BBS's with it.

I think the next modem was 2400, but I remember being so excited when we got a 9600.

I got a hand me down 386 and later bought a 486 cpu used off a neighbor and upgraded it myself. That was my first time tinkering inside the case.

The first computer that was in the home for me to use was a 486 IBM PS/2 dual booted with OS/2 and Windows 3.1. The first computer that was actually mine was a little NEC laptop running a Syrix equivalent of a Pentium II and Windows 98.

My first cell phone was a Motorola Talkabout. It was my father's, he had a cell line for a couple years. When I got my driver's license, I think he got all dad-like and decided everyone needs cell phones, so he added two lines to the plan, got new phones for him and my mother and I got his old phone. That was circa 2003.

My first "smart" phone was somewhere around 2009 or 2010, an LG Ally.

At the end of the last century, somewhere between 97-99 probably. I became fully equipped with a Motorola 501 Startac and a Psion Series 5mx. My whole world changed. I’d used a mandarin clamshell iBook and a “rabbit” phone previously (maybe an NEC?) but the Motorola and Psion were the first I bought for myself.

Computer: Tatung Einstein (1988 I think) Mobile Phone: Nokia 402 (1999) Smart Phone: Orange SPV (2002)

Early 80s, maybe 83 or 84, we got a Dick Smith VZ200 (rebadged VTech Laser 210 - Dick Smith here in Australia was kinda like Radio Shack). It had 8Kb of RAM but Dad bought the 16Kb expansion - 24Kb of RAM!

I got a book from my uncle on how to write BASIC programs, and wrote a heap of stuff. We could backup and load programs from a regular cassette tape recorder that plugged into the computer, sorta like the Commodore 64 later on.

Early 90s, guessing around 93, I got a Nokia 101 analogue phone. I even bought a car kit for it, and installed it in my Datsun 180B. It had a snake game on it, and I actually used it to make and receive phone calls.

I got my first phone in 2002. It was a Nokia 3510.

I got my first computer, or rather our first family computer, in the same year. All I remember specs-wise is that it was your typical beige Pentium 4 machine, 40GB HDD, massive 19" CRT monitor, running Windows XP.

23 cause the fam was broke

S21 at end of 2021.

Computer way before then, don't know