I have owned several computers; however, all but two are long gone. Here is the list.
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1. Commodore 64, DOS operating system, with external 5.25" floppy drive and Commodore MPS-803 dot-matrix printer; used an old TV as a monitor. No modem. Got rid of the entire system when I moved in 1999 (space constraints in my then-new apartment).
2. "Explorer" (off brand, don't know who actually made it) with integrated keyboard and Emerson b&w VGA monitor. 3.25" floppy drive, operating system (DOS 3.1) built in, probably on the internal hard drive. No modem. This computer was given to me by an old friend in the early '90s. No printer.
3. AST "Adventure!" 200 (off brand, again I don't know the actual manufacturer), with an off-brand monitor. OS was Windows 95. I added a printer shortly after getting the computer, but cannot recall the make or model. This computer was my first Windows system, and it got a lot of use -- on the Internet, with e-mail (I began e-mailing a couple of old friends whom I had lost contact with by now, shortly after getting the system) and also as a word processor, although the Explorer system I mentioned above also had WP software and was used in the same capacity. This system had only 8mb of RAM and was constantly crashing due to the sheer number of programs besides the word processor and Internet software I was using with it, but it was the best I had at the time, so I made the best of it.
I gave the AST system away when I moved, again due to space limitations in the apartment I moved to. I don't know what became of it after that.
4. IBM "Aptiva" desktop tower. My second Windows computer, this one had Windows 98 (I later upgraded it to Win98SE), a 600 MHz CPU, 128mb of RAM, a Hewlett-Packard DeskJet 832c printer, and was TOTL at the time (late 1999). Kept it 11 years, used it to death, and still have it, although it is now in storage in my bedroom closet and has a dead CMOS backup battery.
5. My current system. It is a "PowerSpec" (house brand of MicroCenter, Columbus, Ohio) model 8736 desktop tower running Windows XP, 2.23 GHz CPU, just under 1GB (991 MB) of RAM, with an HP flat-panel monitor and an HP LaserJet 4+ lasser printer. The FP monitor and laser printer were later addons to the system; the laser printer was given to me by my friend who had given me the Explorer system I mentioned above. He has an accounting business and was upgrading his entire office to Windows 7 at the time, so, knowing that I had been running Windows 98 (by this time becoming obsolete), he decided to give me one of his old Windows XP systems for Christmas two years ago, followed by the LaserJet 4+ laser printer last year.
BTW: For now, the Windows XP system does well for what I need it to do, but I'm wondering just how much longer I will be able to run that operating system before being forced to upgrade to Windows 8 (old software refusing to run on Win8, etc). I'm sure this system will run Win7, but eight....I don't know.
I used Windows 98 for 11 years (!) and got by, but I'm not so sure I'll be so lucky with WinXP. I use this WinXP computer for online banking and other tasks on the Internet, and am wondering how long I have before I start seeing warnings online or elsewhere that XP is not secure enough for such activities. I realize the end of XP's life cycle will be some time in 2014, but I wonder if the end is already in sight as far as some applications or secure Internet sites are concerned.
I am using the Lotus 1-2-3 office suite (presently, word processor only) and am wondering if I will need an entirely new WP system after XP is declared obsolete.
I am concerned about the word processor because every file I have written using that processor, including a story 500+ pages long I've been writing since at least 25 years ago (until 1995 the story was typed using a standard typewriter), can only be read by that word processor and no other. I do have QuickView Plus, a file viewer which, according to its developers, can read most if not all text-based files written with any word processor, so I guess reading the old files won't be much of a problem -- unless QVP32 won't run under Windows 7 or 8. I'm wondering if WordPerfect 5.1, which I downloaded recently, would run on the newer OSs in DOS mode, or will there be such a thing as DOS mode in Win8?
I'm thinking by the time Win8 goes mainstream in offices and such, there may be little or no need for DOS.