My Experience with computers and OS's
I first started with computers in 1998, I was at my grandma's house messing with her old 486 with Windows 3.11 and DOS 6.22. Thats where I learned all I know and thats where my interest with older computers started.
Eventually I wanted my own computer, but my parents didn't have the money to buy me a new one, theirs wasn't even the latest at the time. So around 2004, my uncle sent me a computer he made for me with Windows 98, a 3GB hard drive, 64MB of RAM, and an original Pentium processor at 233 MhZ. I tried upgrading it with a 128MB RAM stick, but the motherboards maximum ram was set at 80MB.
I then found something that really jump started my love of computers. We were at a used book store and I was rummaging around when i found a Windows XP CD for $4. I couldn't believe my eyes. I nabbed it and I still use that copy today.
Soon I found out that that little 3GB hard drive wasn't going to cut it for my needs on that computer. I wanted mostly to play games, but there just wasn't enough room. So in 2005 I saved up and bought a 120GB Western Digital Hard Drive. I still use that hard drive today (and its only half-full).
Now, I was only 12 at the time I bought all these things, but I was still able to figure out how to install all these things myself. The hard drive started my push to update my computer. All the things I bought that year I still use today. The next thing I bought was my CD-RW burner. I bought a case for all my new stuff, since my old one was a non ATX weird case. Then after a lot of saving, I bought my current ECS KT-600A motherboard, my AMD Sempron 2600+ processor at 1.8GhZ, and a 256MB PC 2700 RAM chip.
Now the last thing left to buy was a video card. My old one that came
with the computer my uncle built for me was a ATI RAGE II+ 3D card with
4MB of video ram. The highest 3D content it could run was DirectX 7.
Since all the games at the time were made with DirectX 8.1 and the
latest DirectX version was 9, I needed a new card. So in 2006 I bought a NVIDIA MX 4000 with 128MB of RAM. The only problem with it was that some games didn't quite run right with it, but for the time being it was OK. My old case looked like a piece of garbage, so around the same time I bought a RaidMAX X-1 black case with stainless steel cover and LED temperature readout. Now it looked totally sweet!
The last things I bought for it was a sound card (since the one on my motherboard broke), a 512 MB add on stick of RAM bringing it to 768 MB ram, a NVIDIA GEFORCE FX-5500 256MB Video card, an ok video card for the time (I didn't want to let my old one collect dust, so i put it in my mom and dads new COMPAQ system.), another 512MB of RAM bringing me to 1.25GB, a wireless-G Air-Link 101 PCI card, and a DVD-RW drive. Later the FX-5500 died (more like burned up and filled my computer case with smoke) so I bought a NVIDIA GEFORCE 6200 256MB video card to replace it.
Then I decided to stop buying things for it. I'm planning on getting a new one , hopefully around the time Windows 7 is released (the beta has impressed me so far, especially because it runs on my current system with no problems!). Every so often I fine-tune it or clean it, but thats all. She's now pretty much outdated and can't play all the newer games, but she still plays all the games I bought for her.
My current system config as of January 23, 2009
ECS KT-600A Motherboard
AMD Sempron 2600+ 1.8GHZ Processor
1.25 GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 6200 256MB RAM Video Card
LG DVD-RW Drive
Xtreme Sound PCI 5.1 Sound Card
AirLink 101 Wireless-G Network Card
Western Digital 120GB and Quantum Fireball 4GB Hard Drives
Windows XP Home SP3 and Windows 7 Build 7000 Beta
(The only thing left I have of the original 486 I first started on is a 356MB hard drive that still works. I don't plug it in, but it resides inside my computer on an empty hard drive slot. I plan to carry it on to every computer i build for myself for good luck :)