When did you start using a computer?

In the mid-70s I started dragging around an acoustic coupled portable terminal that accessed the companies mainframe using a standard telephone. It was a heavy almost worthless piece of equipment but it was a very impressive prop that greatly enhanced my reputation and credibility at the time.

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The actual personal computer came to our office several years later as a stand-alone unit with no network.

Over the years we quickly went through several advancements until I started dragging around a much lighter laptop.

I didn't actually purchase a computer for my own use until 2011, several years after I stopped working.
 
I came to the party very late. In 2008 when I was 55 years old I enrolled in a community college culinary class and had never used a computer....I was utterly illiterate in the computer world. My 18 to 20 something classmates were sympathetic and showed me how to log on to the school computers. Any jokes they may have enjoyed at my expense were, mercifully, uttered out of my hearing.
Good thing I was a pretty good cook.....that saved my pride a little bit.
And I purchased a computer for myself later that year......my young friends were eager to help.
 

1971, UICU. I played checkers, online, with someone at Indiana State. It blew my mind, no lie.

I used computers in college classes, in the 70's

Started programming, at home, on an old Commodore 64, in the early 80's. I did my band's song lists, and my sidemen's 1099 figures.
 
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We were online before we had a computer. In the late 90s our kids bought us a Web TV, which was a set top box and a keyboard. It connected to the TV and displayed on the screen. It was primitive but it opened a new world for us. The "kids" were living in the farthest corner of the country, so it gave us good communication with them.
 
Started using a computer in 1990. It was a way for the husband at the time to keep me out of his hair. He wasn't interested in being a good husband so the internet was my companion.
 
I think if i remember right, 1st one was a Toshiba laptop, Windows, about 12 years ago. Was almost scared that i would screw something up. Wasn't sure what i was going to do on it, totally clued out of that kind of technology......a lot of time spent searching and learning.....very slow learning. Had never dealt with any of this back in school days. Didn't do anything important, just playing. A couple of years later, had my eyes on a Mac desktop, got a terrific deal on it, so i ventured and got it. Now, love my Macs. Have my desktop, laptop, airbook, and ipad. As for learning to do important stuff on it.....i really amaze myself....do online banking, paying bills online, shopping, hobbies like jigsaw puzzles, color and paint by #.....i only learned how to download a few short months ago. Tons more to learn. Never thought i would say this, but if the internet went down, would miss it tremendously.
 
1970 - Worked as a 'cold' typesetter for a newspaper. The job ad requested someone who could type 120 words a minute. No problem, I was a super-fast typist. When they set up this special air-conditioned room to hold the very large equipment, I discovered that it couldn't handle 40 words a minute input without crashing. Ho hum - I turned to typing with one finger! The input then went to a "printer" the size of a commercial refrigerator where it was converted to a perforated tape that I learned to read (like braille) before producing a strip of advertising type, ready for paste-up. We've come a long way!
 
In the mid-1970's when Apple computers began to take off, a computer program for them was developed and foisted on educators as a means of meeting equally new requirements for individualized educational program plans for special students. No training was provided in how to actually use the computers, and we lacked knowledge on even such fundamentals as how to turn them on. Early computers crashed and locked up often, had limited memory, and printers were notoriously balky...
 
I learned to program in Basic and Fortran in college in 1968 on a DECsystem 10 mainframe. Started writing programs for my job around 1980. Those programs would obviously be long, long gone by now, if for no other reason than the fact that I used 2-digit year date codes so Y2K would have done them in.

We bought our first PC in 1984 (Apple IIe Enhanced). By today's standards it was a pitiful machine, but it had the coolest color monitor with a power-tilt CRT. :D
 
It was in 1995. I bought from Sam's Club. It had Windows 95. (Yes, there was a Windows 95. The disc to upgrade it to '96 was in the box.) I remember connecting to the internet the very first time. I knew I was online, but I had no idea what to do. I also remember connecting a printer to it. This was a weekend experience. You had to type in code, like "asp.Ex??9i) dvAj63.{m}///FCRE\\\..................".to get the damn thing to work. Few people got it to work without threatening to kill someone in Customer Assistance". And, this was so long ago, Assistance spoke understandable English.
I notice from the posts above that many had computers in the 70s & 80s. I guess I lived in the dumb part of town, because in 1995, I was one of the first in my neighborhood to get a computer.
 
In the early to mid-70's, the Dept. of Justice was using Mohawk Data Recorders (magnetic tape). They were using a printing press for traffic summonses. Just before I left, around '78, they were about to transition to computers.

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My first work computer in the 80's looked something like this:
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I've stayed with Apple computers ever since .....
 

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