When do you first remember using a mobile phone or computer?

Would have been early/mid 90'son my Grandad's BBC micro. I remember playing Repton, Space pilot, Strykers run, Frogger, Qwak and a few others.
1 game in particular escapes me, I just remember being fascinated by the artwork on the cover - a bright green cartoon frog, I think.

Mobile would be around 2000 when we got a eriksson something-or-rather and calling all my friends (while in the house!) just to say I had a mobile ... We quickly learnt how expensive they were. :D
 
Computer: ZX80 when it came out

Phone: Philips D12 when it came out.
I was also very naughty and chipped it so I got calls for free.
 
Very first computer which I used would have been a Commodore PET at school in 1981, followed by a ZX81 for home use that Christmas, then the classic BBC B a couple of years later (Thanks Mum & Dad - £399 was a small fortune back then, but the programming I learned back then set me up for a career).
My first mobile was a Motorola in the very early 90s.
** Do not hotlink - EVH **

I'm now feeling rather old :(
 
Last edited by a moderator:
First time I used a computer - we had some sort of Apple at primary school, about 1990.
First time I owned a computer - about 2000.
First time I owned a mobile phone - about 2000. Some sort of Nokia brick with an antenna that used to make holes in my pocket. I used to make WAP sites for it.
 
first pc was my dad's windows 95 machine, used to get cd's from the local library with different games, i remember there was a ww1 flight sim 1 called red baron i particularly enjoyed, as well as a demo cd with missile command and frogger on it.

first pc i owned was a sort of a hand-me down, can't remember the specifics but it was a 700mhz single core amd with 512mb of ram until i randomly found another 256mb stick and put it in there (yeah, i didn't know much about pc's then). had an nvidia gpu although cant remember what type.

from that i "upgraded" to a dual core athlon laptop which tbh was worse in many respects due to a lack of gpu so i still kept the old tower for a good while later. thing clogged up with dust and in the end the battery life was just long enough to shut it down before it booted, which was fine because even if you had it plugged in launching more than 1 browser tab at a time would overheat the cpu (yes really, it would idle after boot at 100° before you even did anything)

after that i finally entered the master race, although starting from no real knowledge i of course bought the amd 8 core chips because how can a 4 core be better than an 8 core? right?

still have that although it's yet to shake off bulldozer it has had enough periphery upgrades to perform well enough for what i need (i think newer games using more cores certainly helps).


first mobile was a nokia 3310, then i stayed on the yearly upgrade bandwagon until i gave up around 2008 and just started getting hand me downs (and not bad hand me downs either). didnt buy another phone again until i got the z5 i currently have.
 
BBC Micro at school...remember the turtle looking thing that was programmed to draw on the floor! Must have been 86-88 going by what school I was in then.

No idea on make of phone...first mobile I used was prob a car phone. Late 90's
 
builder22 said:
BBC Micro at school...remember the turtle looking thing that was programmed to draw on the floor! Must have been 86-88 going by what school I was in then.

No idea on make of phone...first mobile I used was prob a car phone. Late 90's
Click to expand...

We had the turtle also groundbreaking stuff back then.
 
adolf hamster said:
was that the grey dome with a hole in it so you could drop a marker pen in it and get it to draw things?

have vagues recollections of seeing one in school although it was a bit aged by that point
Click to expand...

Sounds right. I remember a plastic beige coloured dome. You put a pen in the middle and attached it to the BBC and drew pictures.
 
ZX81 in 1981 playing space invaders. Then Football manager once I'd got a 16k ram pack add on.

First phone I used was around 1988 a Motorola brick type thing. Had a 10-12 hour stand by time & took about 6 hours to charge!
Saw one recently in a museum :D

hW7vAWuh.jpg.png
 
jsmoke said:
Sounds right. I remember a plastic beige coloured dome. You put a pen in the middle and attached it to the BBC and drew pictures.
Click to expand...

the one i remember had buttons so you could do simple programs yourself, we didn't connect it to a computer but apart from that it sounds the same.

this would have been late 90's i guess when i saw it?
 
Robzere31 said:
ZX81 in 1981 playing space invaders. Then Football manager once I'd got a 16k ram pack add on.

First phone I used was around 1988 a Motorola brick type thing. Had a 10-12 hour stand by time & took about 6 hours to charge!
Saw one recently in a museum :D

hW7vAWuh.jpg.png
Click to expand...

That’s how you know you’re getting old, when things that you used when they were cutting edge are now in museums!

On that point, are there any technology museums in London? I’d find it quite interesting to see all the old computers and phones etc.
 
First computer at home was end of the 80's Acorn of some sort.

First mobile I used was a Philips Fizz that my mum bought in 1996 and I go my first mobile in 1998 after my last GCSE exam.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom