Thanks to those of you who have been contributing to tech since the punchcard days. We have a huge variety of age groups here and I think it creates a better experience, as does the quality of respectful members who contribute so many positive things. I'm only 25 myself.

I often wonder what the technology will be like when I'm telling my grandchildren, "Yes, I know it's hard to believe, but I swear when I was your age, we really did have to actually touch our computers to operate them. In fact, we even had to plug them in just to charge the batteries,"

Just turned 16

Most of us "Q-Tips" (White hair on top) are the ones that started and brought this industry to what it is now. I remember my 1st computer (TR-1000)had no hard drive and no place on board to store programs. I was a forward thinker, by insisting on 2 drives, so I could put the program disk in 1 and a storage disk in the other. I remember having to reach back to the back of the desk-top to turn on the switch to make it go! Course, that was much later in life, when I was learning to use the smaller desk-top version. I remember many a college date being canceled due to the computer main-frame my boyfriend was baby sitting. It would go off the deep end from time to time and eat & spit out data processing cards and run mountains of connected computer print-out paper through the machine and on to the floor. His job was to clean up the mess, and try to stop it before it ran out of paper, without screwing up what it was processing. Who knew we would all be carrying around iTouches with more computing power in them, than the whole main frame could generate!
PS My iPad arrived yesterday 5 days early! Went from China to Memphis in 20 hours, then Memphis to San Antonio in 8 hours, then to my local delivery town of Kerrville in an hour, then to my delivery truck and to my work in about 3 hours! Fed-Ex has their game down PAT!

Good grief.... before I took the poll, I tot I was one of the older geeks around here as I tot the iPad was meant for the younger generation.

Incidentally, I'm 45.

Started in 1978 on the Apple II, Atari 800, Commodore 64, Sinclair ZX81. Moved on to BASIC, FORTRAN & COBOL in the latter years and those languages are already obsolete a long time ago.

Although I didn't have a chance to work with punchcards, I did use cassette tapes and 8" floppy disks
Still have an unopened box of 8" floppies in my office which I showcase to the younger generation.

31 first computer had a turbo button....lol

Originally Posted by UncleDannie

Well, I was born in 1944, my 1st real computer was a TRS-80 from Tandy, I still have some parts to my Commodore-64, remember running all my programs in Basic, and have owned every edition of the iPhone. I bought an iPad 16GB last week and will get my new iPhone 4 on June 27. And iVan, I owned a '57 Chevy when it was new.

So you owned a new '57 Chevy when you were 13? I don't think so. ;-)

Curve would benefit from two more bins. You can see the mean, but not enough definition over '55.

First car was 1957... I was 14, Dad bought me a 52 Studebaker which I could drive if I replaced the main bearings, which I did.

First programming was Fortran in 1965. First job was programming Fairchild's first computerized semiconductor test system in 1969.

Own a lot of computer's, but my DD is a T400, iPhone and iPad.

The iPad user interface is a big help to these old eyes. Jobs is right, it's almost magical. And I say this as one that understands both the hardware and software.

Turned 18 last February.

Originally Posted by gentlefury

31 first computer had a turbo button....lol

HaHa - I remember the 'turbo' button, but my first computer didn't have any drives even, you turned it on, wrote the program, when you turned it off the program was gone (I did get a big floppy drive for it later.)

I'm 62 and am retiring at the end of this month. My first computer came as a box of parts that I had to assemble myself. My first modem came somewhat later, was 300 baud, and required that you dial the number on your phone, rip the cord out of the handset, and connect it to your modem before you lost the connection. There was no internet and you had to dial up each computer you wished to contact individually. It was great progress when Geni and Compuserve eventually came around.