Throwback Thursday – The computer that introduced me to the web

So I decided to jump on the “Throwback Thursday” bandwagon today. Here’s a picture of me sitting at the old computer my brother and I shared. It was our first computer, given to us by one of our uncles for Christmas, 1997. So, I had to have been at least 15 in this picture. That computer was top of the line for its time — Dell, Windows ’98, Pentium II 266 MHz, 4 GB hard drive, 96 MB RAM. It was the first computer that was ours, so we were super excited to have it. Previously, we’d done all of our “computing” on our Grandfather’s computers, which was fun in itself (and warrants a separate blog post later on).

My brother and I did so much on that computer. Played TONS of games, like Age of Empires I and Age of Empires II, Monster Truck Madness (that joystick came in handy), The Neverhood (even though we never could get past the first few levels), Microsoft Flight Simulator, The Sims, and many more I’m forgetting.

We typed our school papers on it. Made greeting cards with Microsoft Greetings Workshop (in fact, everyone in the family would approach us to make cards with that program for people’s birthdays). Plus, Microsoft Publisher ’97 was like, the best. program. ever. I made newsletters, pamphlets, and mock business cards.

And, significantly for me, I wrote my first lines of HTML and CSS on this computer. Who knows, maybe I was working on my GeoCities site in this picture. Or my Tripod site. Or my site on GURLPages, or AngelFire.

We had this computer until around 2004, when it finally caved in. My brother and I had to share, and so it was under constant use. I don’t even remember what we did with it. I think we threw it away. But no matter what, I’ll always remember that Dell Pentium II 266MHz fondly.