Welcome to Thursday Coffee Hour. This is an open topic thread so help yourself to the goodies and sit a spell and let us know what is new with you. Since you are reading this on a computer or computerized cell phone I thought we could talk a bit about computers.
My first computer was a Texas Instruments 99/4A. We are talking primitive but it started my love for computers. I had the old voice synthesizer for mine which you programmed to speak using phonetics which I happened to know from Speech and Drama classes. Mainly you played games. You could do primitive programming using Basic. I hooked mine up to my small color television set.
The computer got me interested in taking classes. I took a Basic programming class. It was long enough ago that we programmed on punch cards. I still remember some from that class. What stuck with me most was GIGO - Garbage In Garbage Out. The thing that really illustrated that was the BART system. It was all high tech and computer driven but they forgot one little thing. What happens if a train breaks down? They forgot to have a way to get the broken train off the tracks so other trains could continue to run. I still have a programming book from that era that starts out: "A computer has an IQ of zero." Of course that is only on a good day usually it isn't that smart.
I went from that computer to one that I bought from the JC Penny's catalog. It was my first computer that let me onto the Internet via CompuServe. I also had a dot matrix printer to go with it. It was crude. I still played games on it but they were nothing like the games you can play today.
Today you walk into my house and it is Geek City. I have two main computer in the computer room. They are both hand built to my specifications. Marvin (I name my computers) is the older computer. It runs on Windows XP. It was my art computer for many years. I use it as my backup computer now. It has a flatbed scanner attached to it and a printer. Last Christmas when I was printing out books of pictures and Mom and Dad's stories as written by them I had it printing at the same time as my other computer. I had an art computer built by my brother that I used a lot.
Ruby is my main computer now named after her ruby red color. My grandnephew recently replaced the hard drives on the computer for me. I do all my artwork and Internet from this computer. It is attached to a HP scanner/printer/copier combo. My Mom bought this computer for me when my other art computer went belly up and refused to work any more. Ruby runs on Windows 7. I think of Mom every day as I use the computer. My MP3 player syncs to Ruby.
I also have a HP Pocket computer that is referred to as my brain. Everything goes in there. I have all my contacts, my shopping list, art examples I can show people, my schedule. In other words I really don't have to try and remember everything any more. I even have my recipes in case I am at the store and decide on something different for dinner I can pull up the recipe and find out what the ingredients are. This computer syncs to Marvin.
I have a HP Pavilion laptop with portable HP printer that goes with me when I travel. It can handle art programs if I don't mind waiting. Its main use will be when I get Reid stabilized enough to be able to leave him for a few hours so I can do craft shows. I will be able to show all of my art, print receipts, etc.
My cell phone connects to the Internet and I use it frequently to check mail, Facebook, Daily Kos, and other things. I used it yesterday to pull up Google and get the address and phone number of Reid's doctor in California so they can get his records to his new doctor.
My flat screen television in the living room can hook up to a computer and makes a great monitor. My grandnephew sometimes hooks his laptop up to show things to the family.
So that is this geek and her toys. What did you start out with as a computer? What are you using now? What are your likes and dislikes with your computer? And of course what's for dinner.
Ruby