My tryst with computers!

Anyone who knows me well will concur that I am a gadget freak. I am particularly fond of laptop computers and love their company. While driving back from work today, my thoughts wandered down the memory lane. It was a good flash back that I wanted to document.

I first operated a computer in 1992. I was in the VIII grade at Loyola Public School. We were taught to program in GW-BASIC. I vaguely remember trying to build an image of a ship, programming a student mark list and couple of other programs. It was fun. We had around 10 computers in the lab. All of them had monochrome screens. There was one computer that had a green screen with black font and that was my favourite. Rest of them had black screens with white font. Coding in GW-BASIC was very interesting. It was programming in its simplest form. Click here for a sample program in BASIC.

After my Class X, I did not get a chance to work with any computer for two years. And then, I joined Loyola College for my undergrad. This was in 1997. Computer Science was not a predominant subject in our curriculum then. I had a natural flair for programming but noticed that I was only interested in the mathematical component of programming. I wasn't too keen on mundane coding. I was more interested in algorithms. It was around this time that the internet fever gripped us. My first email account was with Hotmail. I remember going to an internet cafe and typing an email for 45 min. It costed us 60 rupees an hour to browse the internet. My first email was to my cousin who came to the US in 1997. My second email account was with Rediffmail. I used to have pen friends, prior to the advent of email. When email entered my life, pen friends went out.

By 1999-2000, I became very attracted towards computers/internet. I used to go to an internet cafe twice a week (two hours), which was 'high frequency' then. In 2000, after my graduation, I coerced my mom to buy me a personal computer. I opted for a HP Brio. This was my first 'own' computer. Specs read something like this: Intel Celeron 500-700Mhz, 32 MB RAM, 10GB HDD with Windows 98 (Second Edition). It had a floppy drive, a CD drive and came with a huge CRT monitor. It costed us ~45,000 rupees to get this PC along with a computer table and chair.

I had many PC games installed. I remember Wargasm and NFS. I was fond of another game whose name I cannot recall. I had MS Office and Borland C installed. I primarily used my computer to play games. I was at IIIT for a brief period. I had an Acer computer there with which I did not have whole lot of an attachment. I wasn't motivated enough to translate my interest in algos into programming. Honestly, I had other distractions.

In 2004, I sold off my HP Brio and bought a build-to-order 'assembled' computer. This was a Pentium-4 with 256MB RAM and 40GB HDD. I loved the increased speed. I decided to never purchase a Celeron machine again. By 2004, I became a regular user of the internet (not an addict yet!). We had internet in our house too and browsing became my favorite past-time. Also, it was around this period that I involuntarily gave up reading newspapers. I used to follow news on the web. I was slowly becoming an internet addict.

In 2005, after I came to Cincinnati to pursue my masters, I bought my first laptop. Dell Inspiron. I had to compromise on the price of a new laptop and ended up purchasing a Celeron machine again. But as I was a student with no source of income, I don't think I had much of a choice. Its specs - Intel Celeron 1.4GHz, 512 MB RAM, 40GB HDD. I got it for $450. I used this laptop primarily for school but right from the day I got it, I wanted to get rid of it. Ironically, I had this laptop for the next two years. I joined US Airways before I graduated. For my master's thesis, I needed a powerful laptop as I needed to process huge search logs (~10GB data). It was processor-intensive and my Dell surely could not handle it.

On May 5, 2007 I bought one of my favorite devices to date - IBM Thinkpad. It was a T60. Specs: Intel Core 2 Duo 1.83GHz, 2 GB RAM, 120GB HDD and Windows Vista Ultimate. It costed me a bomb though - $1600. It was a huge upgrade from my handicapped Dell. My thesis went through like a breeze. As days went by, I developed a passion for programming in Python. It was partly fueled by my work and partly by the language itself. I still use this ThinkPad and have all the software and apps I need installed on this machine. I also have Ubuntu installed on it.

My fascination with laptops compelled me to sell my Dell and purchase a Sony Vaio for my wife. In Jan 2008, I purchased Sony Vaio VGN-NR110E. It came with an Intel Dual Core processor, 1GB RAM and 160GB HDD. I bought this for $550. I upgraded the RAM to 2GB. This laptop served us good. Sony Vaio was aesthetically beautiful and keyboard layout was very good. Very user-friendly. By Jan 2009, I was kind of bored with Vaio. While I still have my ThinkPad (I foresee hanging on to it for the next 2-3 years), I sold the Vaio and bought a HP Pavilion laptop. This was a significant upgrade again. It had a Intel Core 2 Duo, 3 GB RAM and 250 GB HDD, integrated webcam/microphone and with many other multimedia features. I bought this for $550. In May 2009, I bought another laptop - Lenovo G530 - for my Mom. It is again a Dual Core/2GB/160GB machine.

So, long story short, my tryst with computers will go on. I feel happy when I look at the prices of laptops these days. I am happy because, I can try different laptops whenever I want to. It gives me lot of pleasure doing so. To me, my laptop is more a personal organizer and an internet communicator. I don't have any work-related material in it, but do have all the latest software (including Python 3.1.1 that released yesterday) for my non-work related stuff. I am looking to move further on, to Mac perhaps. In all certainty, my next laptop will be an Apple MacBook. Do you want to continue to MacBook (Y/N)? Y