I suppose I was first introduced to computers when my son had one in the late 80s/90s. I was fascinated by what he could do with it and used to sit with him watching him operating the keyboard.

I had my first computer as a gift from Mr Mags and my son, I was completely shocked by it as I thought there was no way I would be confident to use it on the own. My son spent a lot of time showing me how to use it and I remember how chuffed I was when I sent my first tester email to him and received an email back from him congratulating me!

In October 2003 I joined my first forum which was a cat forum, run by Azz. Since then I haven't looked back and learnt so much more.

Now I wouldn't be without my Mac, my best friend!

Oh yes, Word and Excel were around then, as were others, like Lotus 1 2 3.

2006, late OH got the home PC, at first I was terrified of it, wouldn't go near it, then I was watching Springwatch on TV in 2007 & they mentioned the BBC had a message board, or rather a series of them, with lots of pages to go on. I managed to find it on line, not having a clue what I was doing & joined the Springwatch board, then several others. The people on the BBC boards were very helpful & taught me a lot, sadly the BEEB in their wisdom decided to close all their internet message boards & people on them decided to start their own forums, I joined several of those & the rest is history.

I loved CB radio, I had lots of trucker friends & others. The CB was bought for my Son, but I think I used it more than he did.

Around 2001

My first computer was based on the Z80 Chip which I bought in 1980 it was followed by a Commodore C64 which I had for many years and which I first bought a modem for. It was a 300baud baud modem made in Perth - I thought it was magic - 300baud was about the same speed as you could read text.

By 1990 I had a 386 IBM type machine and ran a Dos based Bulletin Board Service (BBS) for 10 years. It had a 64Mb HDD and when I went to the local dealer to buy another 64Mb HDD he said, "What on earth do you need that much space for?"

Not the internet still it just used the phone network. Over the years the modem speeds increased dramatically, I ended up with a US Robotics High Speed modem, I forget its maximum speed but it seemed blindingly fast at the time, my BBS had two phone lines and It finished in 2000 when the millennium bug and the internet finally killed it.

I used the Internet for some years before that using DOS programs such as Netscape to explore with. I ran DESQview on the computer to make a true multitasking computer divided into several 640Kb computers - remember that limitation?

I have been online since the mid-90s. Started using it for email exchange and posting to newsgroups on the Usenet with a modem. Got my first PC in 1990 using MS-DOS. It was more fun in 1993 when I bought a Windows 3.1 PC. The breakthrough for me was in 1995 with a multi-media Windows 95 PC and an internet hook-up. My first email provider was GMX and still is. I still remember the hassle of using either Word, Lotus, Wordstar, or Wordperfect and the incompatibility of more complex files produced with each of them.

It was in 1983 that I got started. Before Excel and Lotus 123 there was VisiCalc and Multiplan.

That's lovely Tiff, and good for the clever folk who started their own forums....must have been a big deal back then I think.



Oh I had a CB when I was younger and living out in the country...all I ever spoke to were people from school, when what I really wanted was a huge aerial in the garden so I could chat to people from all over the world! It was fun