Jeez you guys are bringing back the old computer memories. My first computer was an IBM PC Junior that I purchased at the "Sears Computer Store", anyone remember when Sears had computer stores? The PC Junior didn't have a hard drive and only 1 floppy drive and a funny cartidge drive thing.
My first professional computer was a Compaq Luggable that looked like this...
I was the computer guru in our firm. I carried this 20 plus pound monster to client's sites along with a dot matrix printer and a large catalog case full of the client's files and performed their accounting on site. Many small businesses back in those days didn't have their own computers.
Fast forward to today. I keep two computers in my office built to the exact same specs just in case one crashes (I had a motherboard fail one year during the first week of April). I use four 130 gig removeable hard disk drives (a work drive, a data back up drive, a "play" drive and a misc storage drive). I use the "play" drive for uses like Pond Boss posting and surfing the net. Since the "play" drive does not contain any business or client data I can keep sensitive information isolated. My wife and I have been building our own computers for over 10 years. Building one yourself is not difficult and is fun. I replace my systems every 2 to 3 years just to keep my motherboard/processor combination relatively current.
As for a montior I use a 21 inch LCD. The large size makes life easier on my tired old eyes. It also lets me view Bruce's monster blue gill in life size proportions. The unfortunate side effect of this was that I had to get a "drool protector" for my keyboard.
