by Casey Lynn
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

I was a child of the eighties, and the first computer that my parents bought was a Tandy CoCo, on which my mom taught me to type when I was seven. That computer also jumpstarted my love of videogames, since hours of playing Maniac Mansion revved me up to beg for a NES the very first time I saw an ad for one on television.

Though my family went through a slew of other computers as I grew up, including the Dell that went off to college with me, the one that I still think of as “my” first is the one that I picked out on my own, after said Dell crashed and burned–an iMac G4, shortly after the line was released. I’d previously been running a dual-partition of Windows and Linux and found the shiny new OSX to be preferable to both. Though I’ve since had to switch to a PC desktop for work, I still have that iMac. It’s sitting on the entertainment center in my living room, and its sole purpose in life is to store MP3s and play iTunes while hooked up to a rockin’ sound system. I’m sure that many computers wish for such dignified last days.

Do you remember your first computer? How did it change your life? Have you ever had one you loved too much to let go?