I was reminiscing about my "tech" journey...

[Shibblet]

A bunch of little things we went through, details.
I remember DIY-ers not liking to pay the premium prices for Windows OS -- XP at the time.
This was around 2005-2007 (?).
But at Newegg, if you bought certain key PC components (like motherboard and X and Y parts),
you could buy an OEM of XP for $99.
It felt like a big deal back then!

It did... I remember getting my first copy of XP at the ol' OEM discount, and it was pretty amazing.

I have to tell this story, cuz it's pro-linux and anti-microsoft.

I went into a computer store to purchase a laptop a couple of years ago. They had an Asus F1504E on sale for $399.99, and it had the specs that I wanted. It came pre-loaded with a copy of Windows 10 "S" Mode.

I asked the guy at the store "What is 'S' mode?" knowing full well what it was... he replied with "Well, that's Windows 10, only all of the software you install has to come from the Windows Store app."

"Oh," I replied, "well, I have a bunch of software that I was planning on installing, and I don't want to have to re-purchase it."

He said, "Ok, tell you what... if you purchase this today, I will drop $100 off of the price so you can get a copy of Windows 11 Home.

I said "Great! You've got yourself a deal!" I purchased the Laptop for $299.99, and went home and installed Kubuntu on it, and couldn't be happier. ;-)

[Qqmike]

Ha! Good story, Shibblet.

[Beerislife]

I left school to work when I was 17 (further education was a pipedream!) and there was no such thing as
a computer at my secondary school, hell, we didn't even have typing classes.

I bought my first home PC in 1983 when I was back in the UK for a couple of months. It was a Dragon
Data 32. I left it with my brother when I returned here.

My first real PC was an NEC PC9801RX with twin 5" floppy drives running custom DOS with the double
byte character set in a ROM chip! It could not run "regular" MS-DOS! I spent an arm and a leg on a
sound card and external 100Mb SCSI HDD for that machine!

Next up was a Toshiba Dynabook with a 20Mb HDD and a 3.5" floppy that could run regular MS-DOS!

After that I started building my own and went from MS-DOS 6.x with Windows 3.1 to IBM OS/2 Warp 3,
then Warp 4, and finally Linux!

Not bad for someone turning 28 (again) this year! 🤣🤣🤣

[cookiemuncher]

You are all still youngsters
I completed high school in 1972.

My first introduction was a ZX81 (the flat black one) for which built myself a 16MB memory extension (I was an electronics techie in broadcasting hardware until retiring in 2017).

In the nineties my father-in-law needed a PC for his panel shop, so we went out and bought him a PC-AT and me a PC-XT to learn on. Found PC-File and used that for a few years. I have a copy today that can run under Dosbox.

The only bought PC was a Packard Bell Pentium 100. I have had 2 laptops, a Samsung and a Lenovo Ideapad.

I went through a Commodore 64, and practically all the generations from graphics cards and colour monitors, 386, 486, Pentium. Windows 3.1, 95, 98, Win 10. (my wife worked in a PC shop)

Currently I have a i5-11400 and AMD RX-9060XT which I dual boot into Windows 11 and Kubuntu 26.04

[barfly]

My tech journey: 1966: apprentice radar technician (read cleaning pigeon droppings off the massive Type 80 radar at RAF Sopley Hampshire)
1967: transferred to apprentice TV engineer at Bealesons of Bournemouth. My first jobs, re-stringing broken dial drive cords on radios, replacing toaster and electric iron elements, eventually moved to radio and then tv (b+w) repairs.
1969: rigged a reel-to-reel tape recorder up to an old 12" Pye TV recording the moon landings in my bedsit flat.
1970: moved to Radio House of Poole, introduced to colour tv principles.
1971: moved to W.H. Wigfall TV engineer. Spare time designed and built first power supply in the world for electronic fly killer (blue light fly catchers).
1980: Changed to reprographics, copier engineer.
1982: Emigrated to Perth Australia, State Service Manager for Pioneer Electronics. Attended the first video disc technical course in the world in Melbourne. Bought first Commodore 64.
1984: State Service Manager for Radio Rentals Perth. First introduction to Apple computers.
1986: Self-employed Video and tv repairs. Wrote my own service programme in DB3plus on first intel computer.
1989: Started partnership Network Electronics Pty. Ltd. Installing/maintaining Video walls and large-screen video projectors and PA systems all over Australia in airports, stadiums and big venues. Installed deaf loop systems.
1995: Partner dies, closed company went back to home repairs.
1997: Returned to college full-time, 3 year course Networking and System administration. One of 12 to graduate in 2000.
2000: IT subcontractor for Poole Controls and Petworld combined 250 Windows desktops and 4 Active Directory and email and file servers. Stood in as Service Manager temporarily for Pool-Controls. Designed and built prototype zigbee and bluetooth interface for their chlorine and ph machines.
2000: did train the trainer and business courses.
2000: Classroom lecturer and field tester for Swan Taxis 2 week full-time courses.
2001: Training Manager for Swan Taxis teaching school also did weekend taxiing.
2001-2008: Subcontracting IT and training services.
2008-2012: Started importing leisure trailers from France to Australia, set up new business with partner. Designed and built all IT systems, website, import logistics.
2012: Heart attack stopped full-time work on doctor's advice. Spent much time researching Linux flavours and learning more about Linux.
2014: repatriated back to the UK, taxi driver in Christchurch for a while, continued with Linux journey.
2014-present: Volunteering at Southbourne Men's Shed, maintain their IT records and take care of all things electronic, minor repairs to electronics and continuing with Linux journey, now settled on Kubuntu as the flavour of choice.